Llorente González, Leandro JavierVence Deza, Xavier2020-03-252020-03-252019-09-07Llorente-González, L. and Vence, X., 2019. Decoupling or ‘Decaffing’? The Underlying Conceptualization of Circular Economy in the European Union Monitoring Framework. Sustainability, 11(18), p. 4898http://hdl.handle.net/10347/20915In recent years, the shift to a circular economy (CE) has become an increasingly important component of the European Union’s development strategy. However, no consensus has yet been reached on the depth of the transformation this implies, nor on the most appropriate strategy for its measurement. In 2018, the European Commission presented a monitoring framework to evaluate the progress made in this transition, focused on the priority objectives of the European strategy for the CE. This article aims to discuss the conceptualization of the CE behind the selection and interpretation of the metrics proposed by the commission. It is argued that the chosen indicators are mostly concerned with material self-su ciency and recycling, neglecting other dimensions of the concept more closely related to systemic change. Moreover, some issues that are relevant from a CE perspective, such as the disparate distribution of recyclable material flows among EU Member States in terms of value and environmental impact, are overlooked in the interpretation of the available information. Consequently, a more ambitious and diverse selection of metrics is suggested to reflect the wider socio-economic and environmental objectives of the CE, thus preventing the dissemination of a limited version of the concepteng© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Circular economyMonitoring frameworkCircularity metricsTrade in recyclable materialsSecondary raw materialsSystemic changejournal article10.3390/su111848982071-1050open access