In reconciling economic growth with environmental benefits by moving to regeneration and restoration rather than extraction and consumption, the European Commission has recognised the urgency of moving towards a circular economy and in 2015 adopted the Circular Economy package and an action plan. On the national level, the European Union countries identified priorities related to the circular economy in their smart specialisation strategies, in line with the targeted indicators for reducing the amounts of waste and the negative environmental impact. Despite the widely discussed concept of the circular economy, it is already turned into defined action plans supported by specific indicators. Therefore, the EU monitoring framework on the circular economy progress has been created in 2018. At the EU level, the circular economy policy aims to measure its contribution to at least four areas: production and consumption, waste management, secondary raw materials, competitiveness and innovation.
By using Eurostat data about the EU monitoring framework, our research team explore how small open economies have been implementing the circular economy in 2010-2017. The initial results were presented at the 3rd international conference on “Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions” (SSPCR-2019), Italy.