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Policy measures to promote reuse and high-quality recycling of construction and demolition waste
Get PDFThe European Union (EU) has made progress in managing construction and demolition waste (CDW), but more needs to be done to promote preparing for reuse and high-quality recycling. The scope of the current study is the universe of policy measures intended to reduce waste, increase recycling, and achieve cost savings in CDW management in the EU. This study serves to define the state-of-play in the EU and winnow the universe of policies to those that are most promising given current technological and market conditions. Based on analysis of the policies with the highest potential positive impacts, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) recommends considering eight targeted actions at the EU level and ten additional targeted actions at the national and local levels to improve CDW reduction, reuse, and recycling. These policy measures range from legally binding rules to soft regulation and include measures such as extending producer responsibility, promoting selective demolition, and harmonising landfill charges. The measures require further in-depth impact assessment if promoted. The current study offers reliable evidence based on quantitative/qualitative analyses that provide new empirical data and results for use in future impact assessments.JRC.B.5 - Circular Economy and Sustainable Industr
A global reference data set for land cover mapping at 10 m resolution
No full textThis paper presents a unique global reference data set for land cover mapping at a 10 m resolution, aligned with Sentinel-2 imagery for the year 2015. It contains more than 16.5 million data records at a 10 m resolution (or 165 K data records at 100 m) and information on 12 different land cover classes. The data set was collected by a group of experts through visual interpretation of very high resolution imagery (e.g., from Google Maps, Microsoft Bing, ESRI World), along with other sources of information provided in the Geo-Wiki platform (e.g., NDVI time series, Sentinel-2 image time series, geo-tagged photographs, and street view imagery). To ensure high quality and consistency among the experts that collected the data, regular coordination meetings took place, there were regular quality checks of submissions, and comparison with regional land cover maps was undertaken. This extensive reference land cover data set can be used in various applications, e.g., land cover analysis, including mapping and quality verification, ecosystems mapping and modelling, and biodiversity and cropland studies, among others. The data set is available for download at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14871659 (Lesiv, 2025).JRC.D.6 - Nature Conservation and Observation
The Twin transition in the European Union: Assessing regional patterns of EU-funded investments
No full textThe twin green and digital transition is at the heart of the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery and represents a key element of the new growth strategy. The present paper aims to offer a novel perspective on the twin transition by illustrating the geographical concentration of ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) projects associated with green, digital and twin funded-investments, with the last category encompassing projects that integrate green and digital investments simultaneously. Using a novel dataset of projects covering 238 regions of the 27 EU countries for the 2014–2020 period, we find that there seems to be a geographical pattern of the twin transition in the European Union for green, digital and twin projects. However, a binary choice model suggests that the probability of socioeconomic factors to explain these ERDF investments differs by the target of fund (e.g. interregional collaboration, research and innovation). Finally, we report the existence of a substantial heterogeneity in terms of regional policies associated with the twin transition.JRC.B.7 - Innovation Policies and Economic Impac
The Competence Centre on Composite Indicators and Scoreboards 5-year review report
Get PDFThe European Commission’s Competence Centre on Composite Indicators and Scoreboards (CC-COIN), launched formally in February 2016, contributes to better monitoring the impact of European Union strategies and policies by (co)creating and auditing composite indicators and scoreboards that summarise multi‑dimensional phenomena into simplified, yet robust and relevant, concepts. This publication showcases the activities of the Competence Centre on Composite Indicators and Scoreboards during the period 2021-2025.JRC.S.3 - Science for Modelling, Monitoring and Evaluatio
Strategic technologies and industrial polices for competitiveness and sustainability
No full textThis policy brief provides a digest of the scientific evidence and policy implications of the European Commission’s Conference on Corporate R&D and Innovation (CONCORDi 2025), which took place in Seville on 24-26 September 2025. The conference focused on strategic technologies, industrial policies, economic competitiveness, and sustainability, and it featured 63 academic presentations, 2 keynote talks, 2 policy round tables, 4 policy special sessions, and a science-for-policy debate. The conference highlighted the role of strategic technologies, such as AI, in helping Europe overcome the mid-tech trap, while also addressing their heterogeneous effects on labor markets. It emphasised the necessity for Europe to avoid low-productivity R&D and the importance of large R&D investors in driving higher returns through riskier and higher quality projects. This policy brief underscores the significance of supporting universities and public research centers in long-term research and fostering collaboration with firms. It addresses the incompleteness of the EU single market and calls for more capital market policies and integration efforts to remove barriers preventing firm growth. The integration of green and digital strategies is identified as essential for sustainable innovation, requiring complementary investments and institutional support. The brief discusses the importance of tailored industrial policies with directionality to accelerate transitions and strengthen technological sovereignty while minimizing negative side effects. The brief concludes by remarking that further research is needed to understand the enabling conditions for strategic technologies and to improve the measurement of policy impacts, ensuring adaptive and evidence-based policymaking.JRC.B.6 - Industrial strategy, skills and technology transfe
Towards Industrial Transition in Silesia
Get PDFSilesia is characterised by a coal mining and energy intensive industrial heritage and is undergoing a transition to exit coal that has significant impacts on its industry, employment and communities. In the context of the changing regulatory context for cohesion policy under the next Multiannual Financial Framework, and the transition pathways of the industrial ecosystems developed by DG GROW, a pilot exercise was undertaken: firstly, to track the key development indicators in the region and, secondly, to determine the extent to which the needs of transitioning ecosystem actors in Silesia were being met by current EU financial resources and programming in the region. The research concluded that, partially as a result of the significant amount of funding directed to Poland and the breadth of its focus, the majority of the challenges were being addressed. Nevertheless, some remaining investment gaps and bottlenecks to territorial and ecosystem development were identified, most significantly, that the transition to renewable and energy sources is occurring too slowly, and rapid investment in renewable energy with a long-term perspective is needed in the region.JRC.B.7 - Innovation Policies and Economic Impac
Approaches for the preparation and evaluation of hydrophilic polyethylene and polyethylene terephthalate microplastic particles suited for toxicological effect studies
No full textWhen performing effect studies to investigate the impact of microplastic (MP) on cell lines, algae, or daphnia, it is advantageous if such experiments can be performed without the use of surfactants. The need for surfactants arises from the fact that finely milled pristine MP particles generally are hydrophobic. Methods for the preparation of larger amounts of hydrophilic and hence artificially aged MP particles and approaches for their characterization are of high importance. Here we present methods to artificially age polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and low-density polyethylene (PE) using alkaline and acidic treatments that reproducibly result in large quantities of particles below 5 µm with considerably increased hydrophilicity. The artificially aged MP particles were characterized using particle counting by single-particle extinction and scattering (SPES), particle size by laser diffraction measurements, zeta potential using electrophoretic light scattering, hydrophobicity index (Hy) through dark-field (DF) microscopy, chemical composition by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microscopy, and Raman microscopy. The hydrophobicity index values obtained should allow the aged MP particles to be characterized as qualitative reference materials (RMs) with an ordinal property. Evidence for the maintained integrity and hydrophilicity of the artificially aged MP particles (in powder form) over time was obtained by measurements of zeta potential with a 33-month interval. Uniformity of subsampling with respect to particle number concentration in suspensions within a 10-day period was also investigated. It provided evidence for the possibility of reproducible spiking of a specific number of hydrophilic MP particles with relative standard deviations (RSDs) from 6.2 to 13.6%. For the development of future reference materials of artificially aged microplastics, they should be characterized for an ordinal property (artificial age as Hy-index) and nominal property (identity of PET or PE based on spectral matching).JRC.F.6 - Reference Material
The impact of chemical exposures on infectious diseases in the context of One Health
No full textThis data collection comprises the annexes (datasets) supporting scientific articles that systematically map epidemiological evidence linking exposure to environmental chemicals with changes in infectious disease susceptibility or severity. These datasets are compiled to facilitate the integration of environmental and infectious disease research, aligning with the One Health approach to public health preparedness.JRC.F.3 - Systems Toxicolog
EU rural development support and young farmers’ economic performance: A comparative study of Poland and Germany
Get PDFSupport for young farmers is an important objective in the EU’s agricultural policy framework, aiming to promote generational renewal as a means of enhancing the competitiveness and sustainability of the EU’s agricultural sector. This paper focuses on the economic prospects of young farmers by estimating the microeconomic impacts of rural development programme (RDP) support on the economic performance of young farmers in Poland and Germany between 2007 and 2012. Using the synthetic control method and Farm Accountancy Data Network panel data, we find that the support had mixed effects. In Poland, RDP-supported young farmers underperformed relative to their unsupported counterparts, probably due to the entry of less-performing farmers into the sector, high environmental compliance costs and/or insufficiently tailored policy design. Conversely, old farmers benefited more, probably due to their superior entrepreneurial skills and lower commitment to adopting environmental practices. In Germany, RDP support improved the performance of young farmers, suggesting that it probably addressed some market imperfections. These findings underscore the limitations of a one-size-fits-all approach to supporting young farmers and the need for region-specific policies. Policymakers should mitigate unintended consequences, such as incentivising less-performing entrants, and better tailor interventions to the needs of young farmers. While our findings are specific to Poland and Germany, they contribute to broader policy discussions on the effectiveness of agricultural support for young farmers and highlight the need for further research in different contexts.JRC.D.4 - Economics of the Food Syste
Evaluation of Modeled Carbon Monoxide and Methane Columns in the High Arctic Using TCCON Measurements
No full textMethane (CH4) and carbon monoxide (CO) are gases with important climate impacts as direct and indirect greenhouse gases, respectively. Methane has a warming potential 28 times that of carbon dioxide on a 100-year timescale, and carbon monoxide is a precursor to ozone in the troposphere. Modeling trace gas concentrations in the Arctic atmosphere can be challenging due to Arctic conditions and sensitivity to long-range transport, and comparing model outputs to remote sensing measurements is essential for ensuring that models are performing well. Ground-based Arctic measurements are spatially sparse, so it is important to make use of all such available data sets. In this study, we assess eight atmospheric models, comparing their simulations of atmospheric CO and CH4 column-averaged dry-air mole fractions for 2014 and 2015 with ground-based retrievals of these species at three Arctic stations in the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON). The multi-model mean had mean biases (± one standard deviation of the mean) of −5.4% ± 8% at Eureka, Canada, −6.5% ± 8% at Ny-Ålesund, Norway, and −11% ± 7% at Sodankylä, Finland for CO, and mean biases of −0.25% ± 0.5% at Eureka, −0.90% ± 0.5% at Ny-Ålesund, and −1.0% ± 0.5% at Sodankylä for CH4. Individual model mean biases range from −33% to +35% for CO and −2.5% to +1.9% for CH4. These results indicate that models could benefit from improvements targeting simulations of Arctic CO.JRC.C.5 - Clean Air and Climat