Circular skills: the workforce test for Europe's strategic autonomy

The circular economy has moved from environmental ambition to industrial strategy. As the Circular Economy Act takes shape, one of the questions that will decide whether it delivers is who will do the work. Designing products for repair and recyclability, tracking materials digitally, running remanufacturing lines and recovering materials all require skills that Europe's labour market does not yet supply at scale, with both sectoral and cross-sectoral focus. The EESC own-initiative opinion on building a skilled workforce for strategic autonomy (CCMI/268) puts this question at the centre of the debate.

Skills are the new raw material

In a world of price shocks and fierce competition for resources, every tone of material kept in the European economy reduces strategic vulnerability. The EU depends entirely on imports for certain critical raw materials, including heavy rare earths; the Critical Raw Materials Act caps reliance on any single third country at 65% of supply. This target will not be met by legislation alone. It requires people with skills to collect, sort, recover and process secondary raw materials on an industrial scale.

The cost of inaction is measurable. The Circularity Gap Report 2026 estimates avoidable value loss in the global economy at EUR 25.4 trillion a year, almost a third of global GDP. For European industry, where material inputs are a very significant share of total costs, circular skills are not a social add-on; they are a competitiveness lever.

Skills where the materials flow

Sectors relevant to the circular economy already employ some 4.3 million people in the EU, according to Eurostat. 

Priority should go to the qualifications closest to material flows: product design, industrial processes, maintenance, repair, remanufacturing and secondary raw-material production, complemented by sector-, material- and occupation-specific training.

Social dialogue, respecting national industrial relations systems, is the right setup to organise on-the-job training, job-to-job transition support and career guidance. This matters most in materials-intensive sectors such as steel, aluminum, glass and packaging, where the CCMI has already identified labour-market impacts, and in utilities-intensive sectors such as energy, waste management and water, which face comparable transitions.

What we expect

While respecting the EU's supporting competence in education, the opinion builds on what already works. The European Sustainability Competence Framework (Green Comp) can support the foundations for green skills if evenly introduced across Member States. A more technical European Circular Economy Competence Framework, with micro-credentials and certifications portable across Member States and aligned with ESCO, EQF and DigComp, would facilitate labour mobility and skills recognition.

A Circular Economy Skills Passport, modelled on the Europass framework, will allow individuals to show – in a standardised way – that they have relevant skills and certifications. To reduce bureaucratic friction, modular, ready-to-use curricula delivered through Large-Scale Skills Partnerships would spare SMEs from designing training from scratch.

Funding must be simple and must reach those who need it. Voluntary national voucher schemes could become a primary tool for continuous learning, with explicit access for SMEs, rural areas and disadvantaged learners. Under the next Multiannual Financial Framework, circular skills must be eligible under ESF+ and the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF). Public procurement should reward companies that invest in a circular-skilled workforce, rather than make it a requirement. While we expect companies with established business models to use upskilling and reskilling to adjust, bottom-up innovation should be encouraged – circular start-ups need incubators, mentoring and access to finance, while the social economy's repair and reuse activities could offer a practical entry point into circular jobs.

The forthcoming Circular Economy Act can harmonise markets and set the rules for secondary raw materials. But markets do not run themselves. Done right, investing in circular skills could support turning Europe's resource vulnerability into an industrial advantage.

By Adelina Dabu, EESC Employers' Group member and Rapporteur of Opinion CCMI/268 Building a skilled workforce for strategic autonomy: advancing circular economy preparedness.