"The shift to circular economy is an essential part of the European Green Deal strategy to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and to protect our environment. It is also a key element to ensure that European companies move towards more sustainable production processes and activities. Moving towards a circular economy can bring new opportunities in terms of employment, innovation and new markets for economic actors. However, if not properly managed, this shift could also have negative impacts on employment and working conditions in some specific sectors and regions.

Yet, the impact of this shift on the world of work has not been very much discussed. Only few studies have looked at the effects of circular economy on jobs and skills and social partners have, so far, not been that much involved in the topic. That's why the European Social Partners – ETUC, Business Europe, SMEUnited, SGI Europe – decided in 2019 to start a project on circular economy and the world of work as part of their joint work programme 2019-2021.

The objective of the project was to analyse the impact of the transition to the circular economy on employment, changing jobs and tasks, training needs and skills, working conditions (such as organisation of work and health and safety aspects) and competitiveness.

The project study was conducted by Trinomics and consisted in a review of the existing literature combined with an online survey and interviews of national and sectoral actors. To complement this research, three regional cluster webinars were also organized to confront the findings of the desk research with the national, regional and sectoral perspectives of social partners in different countries."

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