Cross-border capacity building for developing circular regions

Despite the fact that several activities have been carried out in Slovakia and Hungary since the adoption of the EU Strategy and Circular Economy Action Plan in 2015, both countries still significantly lag behind the circular economy and eco-innovation leaders as well as the EU-27 average. In 2018, Slovakia and Hungary ranked 23rd and 22nd in the Eco-Innovation Index, being among the poorest performers in EU-27. Both countries deliver poor results in terms of material efficiency, municipal waste management, scientific research and innovation activity of small and medium-sized enterprises.
In order to accelerate the transmission of circular economy principles to the business sector, the partner organizations will arrange multiple activities to deal with the shortcomings. Partners will in the first place conduct a mapping of the cross border regions and collect sector-specific insights and information about the main barriers in closing the loops on the side of companies. Further to that, they will prepare training materials on topics related to circular economy and about the ways to assess a circularity level of an organization. As there is a constant lack of circular economy experts and their concentration is mainly in the capitals, the partners will organize training workshops with selected professionals from the field. These will also serve partner organizations to extend their portfolio of services and advise the organizations on how they can improve their circularity level. Based on specific meetings with SMEs and stakeholders, the partners will be able to identify concrete measures, which will be integrated into reports with best practices that can serve the public.
On top of that, partners will strengthen the network of stakeholders with potential to apply principles of circular economy. For that purpose, they will also develop a concept of the circularity service, which will bring these principles closer to the regions.