CEFIC on Circularity and Competitiveness

As Europe moves towards climate neutrality and resource efficiency, the chemical industry stands ready to provide circular solutions. These solutions can extend product lifecycles, promote reusability and recyclability, and valorise low-value resources into new raw materials. By ensuring that circularity and competitiveness advance together, the upcoming Circular Economy Act (CEA) can help unlock the business case, scale up the use of circular feedstocks, and accelerate Europe’s transition to a more sustainable and circular economy.

The CEA is set to become a cornerstone of the EU’s Clean Industrial Deal, reinforcing Europe’s strategic autonomy, competitiveness, and sustainability. Cefic strongly supports its ambitions, which must be balanced with concrete measures that will enable the industry’s transition to circularity.

The chemical industry is a foundation of Europe’s industrial ecosystem, enabling circularity across value chains such as automotive, construction, electronics, textiles, and agriculture.

The European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) defines the circular economy as a systems approach, restorative and regenerative by design, maintaining the value of products, materials, and resources for as long as possible.

However, the chemical industry faces challenges in scaling up circularity. Circular economy projects face significant financial and regulatory barriers, including a lack of demand for circular products, competitiveness concerns, and the absence of enabling frameworks

To remedy this, policy measures must be practical, implementable, and investment-friendly, supporting both short-term progress and long-term transformation.

To unlock the full potential of the Circular Economy Act, Cefic recommends:

1. Ensuring coherent regulation and investment-friendly conditions;  
2. Creating demand by strengthening the business case for circularity through a set of measures, including, but not limited to, green public procurement;
3. Enhancing supply by scaling up the use of circular feedstocks and enabling technology diversity;
4. Establishing a single market for secondary raw materials by harmonising end-of-waste and by-product criteria, and implementing streamlined extended producer responsibility schemes.

To further its stance, CEFIC has published a position paper on the upcoming Circular Economy Act with more detailed recommendations.