Report

Circular policy instruments and anticipated impact

In the 2025 report of the Interdepartmental Committee on European Law (ICER), the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving), as in previous years, discusses starting points for policies to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. To this end, CE Delft, Het Groene Brein and Witteveen+Bos have compiled an inventory of 53 policy instruments to promote the circular economy. We assessed the environmental, economic and distributional impact of 28 of these policy instruments. We also assessed two instruments where current policies are being tightened.

Our assessment shows that major environmental gains are possible with the additional instruments. In the case of many of these instruments, we estimate that the effects on the competitive position of Dutch sectors may be limited, as the instruments apply to both Dutch/European products and imports from outside the EU. We also expect the instruments to be acceptable to consumers provided they do not lead to a price increase of products. This means there is still considerable effective additional policy scope to accelerate the circular transition.

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