Data Envelopment Analysis of the Circular Economy in the European Union

Recent decades have shown the importance of separating economic growth and social development from resource exploitation and waste generation. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed significant shortcomings of the linear economy - the vulnerability of global value chains, the depletion of natural resources and the exacerbation of social inequalities. The circular economy offers an alternative framework for a more sustainable and inclusive economic model in the EU countries. The purpose of this work was to determine the level of development of the circular economy in the EU countries by Data Envelopment Analysis. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the methodological approach, namely in the application of the CCR-I model (the model is input-oriented, with constant returns on scale). As a result of the study, the most effective countries in the field of energy efficiency and green energy, as the basis of circular processes, are Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and Sweden. Serbia, Bulgaria and Poland had the lowest performance indicators, according to the estimations.