Content of the meeting

The draft Orientation Paper

Next steps

A Kick-off meeting of the Circular Economy Partnership took place on the 22nd and 23rd of February in Brussels, in the Oslo Region Office. All partners were present at the meeting.

Content of the meeting

The meeting included several very compelling presentations. First, the Norwegian Director General at the Ministry of Economic Development welcomed the Group. Thereafter, the Dutch Envoy delivered a presentation on the history and the background of the Urban Agenda for the EU. Subsequently, DG REGIO presented the Partnership's State of the Play and explained where each of the groups of partnerships is at in the overall process and what is expected ahead (methodologies, deliverables, timing, etc.). Then DG ENV presented the Circular Economy Package and its implications for the Urban Partnership. A very exciting moment was to see the presentations of each member of the Partnership, who presented who they are, their expectations and what they bring to the table.

The draft Orientation Paper

The draft Orientation Paper that the Coordinator (City of Oslo) prepared was challenged by the partners. They felt the partnership should be ambitious and argued a holistic approach is undertaken in identifying the overarching issues hindering cities in embracing the circular economy concepts. At the end a compromise was found and the following three vertical themes and one horizontal theme were identified:

• Urban resource management (vertical theme);
• Circular business enablers and drivers (vertical theme);  
• Circular consumption (vertical theme);
• Governance (horizontal theme).

The group also identified the criteria that will guide them in narrowing down further the scope within the above areas such as urban dimension, value-added potential, the realistic nature, etc.

Next steps

The Coordinator will redraft the scoping paper based on the discussions and circulate it among the partners who would have another week to comment before the paper will be finalised by mid-March in order to be presented to the DGUM on 4 April. ECORYS will in the meantime provide a summary of the state of play to be presented to the UDG meeting on 3 March.

The next meeting will take place on 25th and 26th of April in Brussels.