Assessment of European countries' national circular economy policies.

The circular economy (CE) has become key to achieving the environmental objectives set by the European Union (EU). This transformative process requires linear production processes to be abandoned and replaced with environmentally-friendly circular models. In this scenario, the present study uses Data Envelopment Analysis and the Sequential Malmquist Index to achieve a twofold objective: (1) to analyse the effectiveness of the national CE policies applied by 19 EU Member States and (2) to identify the items of circularity that need improvement, in order to support decision-makers in the implementation of appropriate CE policies.