Influence of EU circularity indicators through fuzzy AHP approach

green deal, the European Commission has proposed a new action plan for the circular economy development. The goal is to identify specific indicators able to provide a measure of circularity at macro level. The objective of this study is to contribute to this effort by determining the most relevant criteria that businesses and academic experts can use to identify additional sub-criteria of the degree of circularity of the economy at macro level. To this end, the study considers four macro indicators and 15 sub-indicators taken from the Eurostat circularity indicators database. The fuzzy AHP analysis has been used to rank indicators and sub-indicators. The proposed study highlights that the main criteria, exhibiting a vast potential to influence the circular economy, are the indicators ‘competitiveness and innovation’ for academic respondents and ‘secondary raw materials’ for business respondents, while patents related to recycling and secondary raw materials are the most significant sub-indicators