Delivering on the circular economy action plan - new opinion by the EESC
It is already 4 years since the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) was installed, and two years since the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform (ECESP) was established. It operates as a virtual forum with a yearly conference, supported by a Coordination Group (CG) of 24 representatives of different organizations who are addressing the circular economy. In 2019, CC’s Director Ladeja Godina Košir was chairing the CG and was recently re-elected as the Chair for 2020. As a “network of networks”, its informal structure stands as an experiment on how to promote the voice of the civil society and organization, which support the CE transition “on the ground”.
To assess the contribution of the ECESP and its multistakeholder design, Peter Schmidt, President of the EESC's Sustainable Development Observatory serving as the rapporteur, and Cillian Lohan and Antonello Pezzini serving as members of the drafting group prepared Opinion NAT/775, which was adopted as EESC’s official document on October 31st 2019.
Its key message is that the ECESP was successful in bringing together the circular economy community from and ensuring stakeholder engagement for deliberation and concrete action. It has already become a successful and visible EU-level forum for facilitating cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder dialogues and sharing good practices, strategies and knowledge on a wide range of circular economy topics.
It recommends that the ECESP should now focus on bringing this excitement to the local level by supporting a decentralized web of initiatives and futhermore, that it should strive to include underrepresented sectors in its networks, such as financial institutions, who play a major role in delivering circular economy projects.
The rest of the document highlights strategies and instruments that must be leveraged to reach the goals of the CEAP, such as providing better information and engagement of consumers and improving Green Public Procurement standards.
The Opinion also refers to the recent EESC’s study on Circular Economy Roadmaps, which also features the Roadmap Towards the Circular Economy in Slovenia, prepared by Circular Change, dr. Janez Potočnik and other project partners .
Circular Change is already fulfilling the recommendations of the Opinion to make multi-stakeholder engagement activities tailored to specific cultural and economic environments by working by Candidate country Serbia, where the preparation to create a circular economy roadmap are currently in full swing.
The full report is available on the link: https://www.eesc.europa.eu/en/our-work/opinions-information-reports/opinions/delivering-circular-economy-action-plan