At the end of December 2025, in a communication (https://aeur.eu/f/k5x ), the European Commission announced the adoption in 2026 of a ‘circular economy law’ designed to remove structural obstacles, create a single market for waste and secondary raw materials and stimulate demand for circular products, services and solutions.
The EU is still a long way from achieving its target of doubling Europe’s circularity rate to 24% by 2030: between 2010 and 2024, the share of recycled materials in the economy increased only marginally, from 10.7% to 12.2%, according to a communication. Without stronger and better coordinated action, the objectives of the ‘Competitiveness Compass’, the ‘Clean Industrial Deal’ and RESourceEU cannot be fully achieved, according to the Commission.
The communication focuses on short-term measures to support circularity in the plastics sector.
The absence of harmonised and predictable EU-wide rules for the free movement of recycled plastics has led to a fragmented market. The Commission will present an implementing act under the Waste Framework Directive to create a single market for recycled plastics by establishing EU-wide End-of-Waste criteria for mechanically recycled plastics, thereby creating the conditions for a single market in plastic waste.
In addition, the Commission intends to provide greater legal certainty for investment in chemical recycling in the European Union by proposing, for the first time, ‘mass balance-accounting allocation rules’. These rules will determine the proportion of products derived from chemical recycling that can be counted towards recycled content targets. This first set of rules concerns the implementation of the recycled content targets set out in the Single-Use Plastics Directive, namely 25% recycled content in PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles by 2025 and 30% in all drinks bottles by 2030.
These rules should encourage investment: the European plastics industry is forecasting up to €8 billion in investment in chemical recycling over the next few years, but stresses the need for a favourable regulatory framework to ensure success. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)