Assessment of the circular economy indicators in the EU Member States

The major purpose of this research is to empirically assess the level of the circular economy in the EU Member States. The empirical research revealed that the major criteria for assessing the level of the circular economy in the EU, according to the experts, are material footprint, patents related to waste management and recycling, and material import dependency, while intra EU trade and private investment in the circular economy sector are considered least important. All the methods indicated Germany as the EU leader in the area of circular economy, Italy and the Netherlands also being high rated. The lowest ranks were estimated for Bulgaria, Romania, Finland and Estonia, which could improve their situation by adopting the best practices of the leading countries (e.g. use innovative business models at the stage of product development, strengthen cooperation between business companies, governmental agencies, NGOs and academic communities). Research limitations: subjective nature of the expert evaluation, which could lead to different indicator weights if similar research is conducted in other countries; insufficiency of the statistical data.