This briefing shows how integrating justice into circular economy policies strengthens environmental and social outcomes. It draws on three reports from the European Topic Centre on Circular Economy and Resource Use on a just circular economy ; on operational frameworks and indicators ; and on jobs, skills, and workforce inclusion .
Key messages
Circular economy policies are most effective when fairness, inclusion and broad participation are integrated throughout their design and implementation. These elements strengthen social cohesion, economic resilience and public trust, creating the conditions for effective implementation and the delivery of environmental benefits.
A successful sustainability transition does not automatically produce fair social outcomes. To avoid exacerbating existing inequalities, policymakers must deliberately embed justice into every stage of the policy process—from design and implementation to monitoring and evaluation. This requires moving beyond a purely environmental or economic focus to give equal weight to social objectives.
Between 2014 and 2023, the number of jobs linked to the circular economy in the EU-27 grew by 10% to around 4.4 million. While the circular economy creates new jobs, some are low-paid or insecure, and higher-skilled roles often benefit already advantaged groups, highlighting the need to improve job quality, strengthen skills development and ensure more inclusive access to opportunities.
Recognising, supporting, and meaningfully engaging small and medium enterprises (SMEs), as well as informal and community-based actors — such as informal waste collectors and grassroots repair networks — can strengthen the circular transition. Valuing these diverse contributions helps improve working conditions, promote fairer outcomes, enhance monitoring, and ensure that local knowledge and practices are respected and integrated.
Justice challenges and policy levers vary across sectors and value chains. Focusing on justice in specific sectors and value chains allows policymakers to act more precisely, addressing key challenges such as job quality, skills requirements, health and safety risks, transparency of data, and the fair distribution of benefits and burdens.
Justice mechanisms supporting effective sustainability transitions
The competitiveness compass and the Clean Industrial Deal provide the building blocks and strategic foundation for decarbonising Europe’s economy and accelerating the transition to low-carbon, circular and competitive technologies. Together, they aim to strengthen Europe’s industrial base while supporting quality jobs and the skills needed for a successful transition.
The Eighth Environment Action Programme reiterates the long-term European Union (EU) vision of living well within planetary boundaries. It recognises that prosperity and human well-being depend on healthy ecosystems.
Efforts to ‘leave no one behind’ and ensure that clean transitions are just and fair are reflected in instruments such as the Just Transition Fund, the Social Climate Fund and the EU Solidarity Fund. In 2022, the European Council adopted a recommendation on ensuring a fair transition towards climate neutrality. This provides Member States with guiding principles for just sustainability transitions.
Meanwhile, EU policy efforts on decarbonisation are anchored in the European Climate Law. This sets the legally binding target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
In this context, sustainability transitions are defined as the processes involved in bringing about long-term structural change towards more sustainable systems of production and consumption — for energy, transport, food and the built environment. They require profound and large-scale changes in ways of doing, thinking about and organising the EU’s economies and societies, as well as in underlying institutions and values (EEA, 2024c).
To support this ambition over time, sustainability transitions need to foster well-being for both humans and non-human species, while respecting ecological boundaries and addressing existing injustices linked to climate change and environmental degradation (EEA, 2024a).
Key considerations for a just transition
For sustainability transitions to succeed, policymakers need to monitor and anticipate the potentially unequal effects of sustainability policies, ensuring that they do not create new inequalities or exacerbate existing ones (EEA, 2024b, 2024a)
Among the ideas and concepts gaining momentum is that of just transition, which emphasises the importance of integrating social needs and considerations into all stages of the policy process. The concept includes designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating policies in terms of how they promote sustainability transitions. While other aspects of justice (e.g. intersectionality, capabilities, intergenerational justice, restorative justice and temporality) can be relevant, three key dimensions have been identified to inform the understanding of sustainability transitions (EEA, 2024c):
- Distributional justice: this focuses on how the costs and benefits of human activities, as well as of policies to manage these activities, are allocated across our society and to other species in the natural environment.
- Procedural justice: this is concerned with who participates meaningfully in and benefits from decision-making processes and why (including how inclusive and transparent participation is defined and delivered).
- Recognitional justice: this recognises underlying systemic injustices and supports the dignity, values and identities of humans, as well as of nature, regardless of the utility to humans.
Together, these dimensions provide a foundation for embedding justice into sustainability transitions.
A circular economy as a key enabler for sustainable production and consumption
The circular economy transition is a key enabler for addressing the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. It represents a systemic shift away from linear production and consumption models towards maximising resource efficiency and circularity across the entire life cycle of products. The concept includes:
- eco-design;
- extending product lifetimes through reuse, repair and remanufacturing;
- ensuring high-quality recycling so that materials can be returned safely and efficiently to the economy after use (EEA, 2024b).
In response to unsustainable raw material use and growing strategic dependencies, the EU has embedded the circular economy transition at the core of its policy framework. Most recently, the Clean Industrial Deal has reaffirmed the circular economy as a driver of competitiveness, resilience and security. The upcoming Circular Economy Act is expected to further accelerate this transition and strengthen Europe’s economic security.
However, positive social outcomes do not come about automatically as a result of circular economy policies. The concept of just transition must be actively pursued through well-designed transition processes (ETC CE, 2025).
Historically, circular economy strategies have focused primarily on environmental and economic performance, while the social implications have received more limited attention. It is only recently that there has been a move to address social justice considerations more systematically in the circular transition (ETC CE, 2025, 2026b).
To support a fair and effective transition, this briefing builds on an expanded understanding of the circular economy that explicitly incorporates the concept of just transition. Figure 1 presents a conceptual model for a just circular economy, in which economic, environmental and social objectives are given equal weight. It highlights how distributional, procedural and recognitional justice considerations can be addressed across value chains, supported by cross-cutting governance and monitoring mechanisms.
Integrating these dimensions can help ensure that the circular transition delivers environmental benefits while also strengthening social cohesion, economic resilience and public trust.
Figure 1. Conceptual approach towards a just circular economy
Justice considerations for different social groups in the circular economy transition
This section analyses circular economy considerations in relation to different social groups, according to the stakeholder categories defined in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products and Organisations (UNEP, 2020): workers, local communities, society, consumers and value-chain partners.
Analysing justice considerations for these social groups allows for a better understanding of what strategies are necessary to ensure that their perspectives are taken into consideration. It also helps point to methods for monitoring the impacts of policy and actions on these groups (ETC CE, 2026b).
Workers: towards decent work for all in a circular transition
Workers in a just circular transition should benefit from emerging employment opportunities that provide fair wages, safe working conditions, access to training, and representation and recognition in transition processes (ETC CE, 2026b).
Between 2014 and 2023, the number of jobs linked to the circular economy in the EU-27 grew by 10% to around 4.4 million (Eurostat, 2025). The EU’s Clean Industrial Deal estimates that Europe’s remanufacturing market has the potential to grow from its current value of EUR 31 billion to EUR 100 billion by 2030 and to create 500,000 new jobs (EC, 2025).
A new baseline reveals that 121-142 million people are employed in the circular economy globally. This corresponds to 5-5.8% of total employment worldwide, excluding employment in agriculture. Women constitute 26% of the circular employment workforce (Circle Economy, ILO & World Bank Group, 2025)
Source: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/just-transition-to-a-circular-economy
