CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Between 2014 and 2018, a true European circular economy strategy took shape with two major components: on the one hand, political commitments, on the other, legal provisions. This book will synthesize these two aspects successively: it aims at helping to understand the level of European ambitions in this area. The first part is devoted to the political orientations of the European Union in favour of circular economy. Chapter 1 reviews the main steps by which this European policy was built. Chapter 2 apprehends the specificities of the European concept of circular economy and its operational versions. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the new political directions for respectively production and consumption. Chapter 5 discusses new political directions for waste management and the creation of a market for secondary raw materials. Chapter 6 deals with the main sectoral aspects of the European circular economy strategy, which concern plastics, food, construction, critical raw materials and biomass, without forgetting water and fertilizers and, of course, waste. Finally, horizontal policies issues such as research-development, financing and monitoring indicators related to circular economy are discussed in Chapter 7. The second part of this book aims at summarizing the main legal provisions that the European circular economy strategy includes. Chapter 8 presents a general picture of European waste law. The main juridical definitions and the legal principles that the European legislator formulates in this area are the subject of Chapter 9. Chapter 10 describes the rules for waste prevention, while Chapter 11 discusses the rules for waste collection and treatment. The problem of quantified objectives in relation to the different levels of the waste hierarchy is explained in Chapter 12. Chapter 13 deals with economic instruments, in particular the European harmonization of the provisions on “Extended Producer Responsibility”. Finally, the last Chapter – before the Conclusions - discusses the other legal aspects that still exist in direct connection with the European circular economy strategy.