August 10, 2026

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August 10, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
Europe Finally Locks In Its 348-Satellite Answer to StarlinkPlatform Work Rules Face a National Scramble Before DecemberDuty-Free Parcels Reach the End of the Line for EU ShoppersAfter Nine Years, Europe and Australia Seal a Trade PactBeijing Answers Europe’s Russia Sanctions in KindOne Year On, the EU-Japan Alliance Faces Its First TestEurope’s Chip Ambitions Still Run Through Taiwan’s FabsWhy South Korea Bet Its Research Future on Europe’s ProgrammeEurope and Japan Deepen Their Economic Alliance as Rivals CircleFive Joint Defence Projects Launch Europe’s Military ShieldElectrification Plan Aims to Make Europe First Electro ContinentHorizon Europe Budget Fight Heats Up as Ministers Push BackGoogle’s DMA Fine Sets Off a Transatlantic Tariff ClashTwenty New University Alliances Join Erasmus for Two YearsForeign Subsidies Case Puts Temu in the EU’s SightsVan Tachographs Now Mandatory for Cross-Border FleetsStress Test Exposes Gaps in Euro Area Bank DefencesEurope Bets on a Gulf Partnership Before the Riyadh SummitWhy the Atlantic Route Now Runs Through MauritaniaKyiv and Chisinau Advance as the EU Accession Talks Gather PaceEurope Finally Locks In Its 348-Satellite Answer to StarlinkPlatform Work Rules Face a National Scramble Before DecemberDuty-Free Parcels Reach the End of the Line for EU ShoppersAfter Nine Years, Europe and Australia Seal a Trade PactBeijing Answers Europe’s Russia Sanctions in KindOne Year On, the EU-Japan Alliance Faces Its First TestEurope’s Chip Ambitions Still Run Through Taiwan’s FabsWhy South Korea Bet Its Research Future on Europe’s ProgrammeEurope and Japan Deepen Their Economic Alliance as Rivals CircleFive Joint Defence Projects Launch Europe’s Military ShieldElectrification Plan Aims to Make Europe First Electro ContinentHorizon Europe Budget Fight Heats Up as Ministers Push BackGoogle’s DMA Fine Sets Off a Transatlantic Tariff ClashTwenty New University Alliances Join Erasmus for Two YearsForeign Subsidies Case Puts Temu in the EU’s SightsVan Tachographs Now Mandatory for Cross-Border FleetsStress Test Exposes Gaps in Euro Area Bank DefencesEurope Bets on a Gulf Partnership Before the Riyadh SummitWhy the Atlantic Route Now Runs Through MauritaniaKyiv and Chisinau Advance as the EU Accession Talks Gather Pace

Secondary Raw Materials Get Their Own Single Market By Next Autumn

Rita Ora
Member State Correspondent, Environment and Biodiversity

The Hague: Europe still throws away most of what it uses. Barely a tenth of the materials feeding the bloc’s economy come from recycled sources, and the rest is dug, pumped or imported, used once and largely discarded. The Circular Economy Act now taking shape in Brussels is the Commission’s attempt to change that ratio, and its central idea is surprisingly market-minded for a piece of green legislation. Rather than simply ordering companies to recycle more, it wants to build a genuine single market for the recycled stuff itself.

The proposal is pencilled in for the third quarter of the year, following a call for evidence last summer and consultations that ran into the autumn. Responsibility sits with Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall, under the broader umbrella of the Clean Industrial Deal and the Competitiveness Compass that define this Commission’s economic pitch. That lineage matters. The Act is being sold not as an environmental obligation but as an industrial strategy, a way to cut Europe’s dependence on imported raw materials at a time when supply chains feel anything but secure.

The mechanics turn on a phrase that rarely stirs the public imagination, namely secondary raw materials. These are the metals, plastics, fibres and minerals recovered from waste and reprocessed for reuse. Today they trade in a patchwork of national markets with inconsistent quality standards, divergent rules on when waste stops being waste, and buyers who cannot be sure that recycled input will behave like virgin material on a production line. The result is a market that is thin, fragmented and easy for manufacturers to ignore. The Act aims to harmonise the standards, lift the quality and, crucially, stimulate demand so that recycled content becomes a default rather than a virtue.

The ambition is concrete. The bloc has set itself the goal of roughly doubling its circular material use rate by 2030, and officials have floated a target material use rate near a quarter as the destination. Reaching it would mean recovered material supplies a far larger share of European industry than today, easing pressure on mines, refineries and the politics of importing critical inputs from a handful of distant suppliers.

How the Commission gets there is still being argued. The measures under discussion cluster around three pillars. The first would amend the waste framework and landfill directives to push more material back into circulation and out of the ground. The second would update the rules on electrical and electronic waste, the fastest-growing stream and one rich in valuable metals. The third gathers a looser set of tools, from harmonising environmental taxes to tightening requirements on extractive waste. None of these is glamorous, and that is rather the point. Circularity is built from regulatory plumbing, not slogans.

Industry reaction is divided in the predictable way. Recyclers and materials firms welcome a larger, more reliable market for their output, while manufacturers worry about compliance costs and the practical headache of guaranteeing recycled content without sacrificing performance. Both camps want clarity above all, because uncertainty about the rules is itself a deterrent to the investment the Act is supposed to unlock.

The deeper question is whether a single market for secondary materials can do for recycling what the original single market did for goods, namely make scale and standardisation work in its favour. If recycled inputs can move across borders with the same ease and confidence as new ones, the economics of reuse improve on their own. If the Act arrives as another layer of fragmented obligation, it will join a long list of circular ambitions that looked good on launch day. Autumn will bring the text. The argument over whether it bites has already begun.

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