Ten years of scientific support for integrating circular economy requirements in the EU ecodesign directive: Overview and lessons learnt

The paper presents and analyses the REAPro Research programme led at the JRC that allowed the Commission to move from the formulation in 2011 of a general policy need to improve circularity of products through design, to the concrete implementation in 2019 of innovative and ambitious circular economy criteria in entry market European legislation. This policy innovation entailed the robust development of complementary components along the policy process, including policy agenda setting (better formulation of the policy need), policy formulation (e.g. identification of indicators to measure resource efficiency of products), and policy implementation (initiation of standardization activities). The paper looks back into 10 years of scientific support to policy and draws some conclusions concerning the needs of scientific support for policy making.