Ambitious EU policies to support the transition towards an inclusive, competitive and low carbon circular economy.

Ecopreneur.eu welcomes the European Commission’s initiative to evaluate the impact of the SUPD and the opportunity to contribute an industry view on its effectiveness, implementation and future development. Its assessment offers the opportunity to reinforce regulatory clarity, ensure consistent enforcement and safeguard a competitive internal market.

Ecopreneur.eu calls on EU policy makers to continue pursuing the ambitious goals of the European Green Deal and its timely implementation. In this policy paper, we specify our demands and recommendations as input for the “Clean Industrial Deal” and “Circular Economy Act”.

A broad coalition of European businesses, NGOs, and industry associations including Ecopreneur.eu sent an joint open letter to the European Commission with a clear ask: Recognise circularity as a strategic pillar in the EU Clean Industrial State Aid Framework, and back it with real support.

The Single Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) proposal to ban certain single-use plastic products where alternatives are readily available and affordable fits with our advocacy to use regulation to ban the most polluting products from the market.

In this open letter issued to European Commission, Ecopeneur.eu and 50+ organisations call for immediate revision of the Food Contact Materials (FCM) Regulation. The letter highlights critical health risks from harmful chemicals in food packaging, including over 70 carcinogens and endocrine disruptors, and demands a comprehensive update to EU regulations within the current legislative term.

At COP28, business organisations from different sectors and sizes called on policy leaders to phase out fossil fuel consumption. The joint letter, co-signed by Ecopreneur.eu, builds on our support given to a "We Mean Business" campaign, where more than 200 businesses with over $1.5 trillion in revenue supported the call “from fossil to clean.”

In view of the 2024 EU elections, Ecopreneur.eu calls on EU policy makers to prioritise the ambitious implementation of the European Green Deal, economic incentives and the creation of 100 Regional Circularity Hubs. "Europe must shift towards circularity to help bring back our economy within planetary boundaries." The European Green Deal underpins this structural change.

In our position paper on sustainable corporate governance, Ecopreneur.eu calls for mandatory due diligence on human rights and environment for all companies. We urge the EU to strengthen the recent European Commission’s proposals, which do not go far enough, and adopt them without further delay.

The joint statement stresses the importance for the EU to continue the development of sector-specific reporting standards. These are essential to clarify the requirements and expectations for companies' disclosures based on their industry, facilitate the reporting exercise and thereby reduce costs.

In this joint paper, we propose concrete legislative measures that advance the working of EPR, making it an effective environmental tool that helps to achieve reduction, prevention, separate collection and closed-loop recycling targets for a broad range of product categories (at the least packaging, textiles and electronic products).

In this joint letter, organisations and distinguished academics urge the European Commission President to stand by her commitment to an environmentally and animal friendly, fair and healthy food system as set out in the Farm-to-Form strategy and present an ambitious proposal before the end of the term.

In this open letter to Members of the European Parliament, Ecopreneur.eu support leading business networks in a call for harnessing the EU’s nature and climate agendas in a robust, ambitious and coherent EU Nature Restoration Law.

Ecopreneur.eu welcomes the European Commission’s mandate to establish a common methodology for the calculation and verification of recycled content in plastics packaging through an Implementing Act as specified in the Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD). In our position paper, we call on EU legislators to grant mechanical recyclers priority access to feedstock that is physically recyclable at scale at the lowest environmental cost.

The signatories of this joint letter led by Ecopreneur.eu, an alliance of companies and associations from the plastics, packaging, consumer goods and recycling industries, call on the European Commission to urgently implement existing as well as introduce legal mechanisms to control and certify imports of recycled plastics to ensure the competitiveness and preservation of the recycling industry as the backbone of the European circular economy.

In this position paper, we express our strong belief that circular design is the basis for an optimal use, reuse and recovery of resources and the transition to a carbon-neutral, inclusive and circular economy. The ESPR should therefore apply to all products but prioritise those that are resource intensive, contain critical raw materials and are potentially harmful to human wellbeing and the environment.

Ecopreneur.eu believes that the "EU waste hierarchy" and the "polluter-pays" principles must be at the heart of any European waste legislation. The review of the Waste Framework Directive shoud therefore focus on the prevention rather than the recycling of waste to become a “Secondary Materials Management Framework Directive”.

Our position paper hails the European Commission’s consumer protection initiative as an important step to unmask and inhibit deliberate false claims and early obsolescence practices. An ambitious regulatory framework with strict rules and sanctions will strengthen the consumers’ trust and help them recognise businesses with genuinely sustainable products and services that are currently suffering from unfair competition due to systematic greenwashing practices.

Our federation calls for consistent and fair policy measures, standards, and rules for measuring GHG emissions, using the GHG Protocol and Science-Based-Targets as a reference, and advocates minimum standards for calculating and compensating these emissions. Specifically, our Federation sees the need for “true pricing” and the internalisation of the “true cost” of GHG emissions for all products and services.

In this paper, Ecopreneur.eu advocates the repair of goods beyond the legal guarantee period of 2 years and enabling sellers to replace defective products with refurbished instead of new ones. An ambitious regulatory framework that promotes repair and reuse for the broadest possible range of consumer products would strengthen the effectiveness of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).

While Ecopreneur.eu recognizes the need for recycling in the circular economy, we approve of chemical recycling only if it is net-carbon-positive, used for otherwise unrecyclable waste products. We therefore call on policy makers to limit chemical recycling to applications and projects that meet 6 specific conditions expressed in our position paper.

Our Federation calls on the European Commission to expand the scope of the planned CBAM from cement, iron, steel, aluminium, fertilisers and electricity to all industry sectors, products and services that cause unfair competition due to carbon leakage, and that well before 2030.

In this paper, Ecopreneur.eu advocates the repair of goods beyond the legal guarantee period of 2 years and enabling sellers to replace defective products with refurbished instead of new ones. An ambitious regulatory framework that promotes repair and reuse for the broadest possible range of consumer products would strengthen the effectiveness of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).

While Ecopreneur.eu recognizes the need for recycling in the circular economy, we approve of chemical recycling only if it is net-carbon-positive, used for otherwise unrecyclable waste products. We therefore call on policy makers to limit chemical recycling to applications and projects that meet 6 specific conditions expressed in our position paper.

Ecopreneur.eu has consistently called on the European Union and Member States to reform the tax system as a key lever for accelerating the circular economy. Our position rests on two complementary pillars: (1) differentiated VAT rates for circular goods and services, and (2) a structural tax shift from labour to natural resource use.