Circular Economy & Private Investment: A Solution Towards Decreasing Material Import Dependency Across EU

The current research focuses on illustrating the stage of the transition to the circular economy in the EU member states, with an emphasis on the main indicators to illustrate the evolution of these countries in recent years. Since we considered that material import dependency across the EU can represent a major risk, especially in the current geopolitical context, the causal relationship between the implementation of circular economy strategies and decreasing this dependency has proven to be a significant one, according to the literature review. The practical analysis of our research involved creating a dataset by collecting data regarding material import dependency (MID), private investment related to circular economy sectors (PICE) and circular material use rate (CMU) across the EU member states between 2010 and 2021. Utilizing this dataset, a linear regression model was created, and in line with the research of the authors (Kirchherr et al.,.Resources, Conservation and recycling, 2023), (Bianchi and Cordella,.Ecological Economics, 2023) or (Baldassarre,.Ecological Economics 227, 2025), we outlined the main hypothesis of the model. The hypothesis indicated that the independent variables of the model (PICE and CMU) have a significant impact on the fluctuation of the dependent variable (MID). The research results confirmed this hypothesis and led to the rejection of the null hypothesis, demonstrating that 36% of the MID fluctuation can be explained by the PICE and CMU variation. At the same time, the relationship between PICE and MID was confirmed to be negative but of low intensity, while CMU was shown to have a much greater impact on MID fluctuation.