The circular economy offers to the tourism ecosystems the opportunity to enhance the sustainable development impacts of tourism, generating wellbeing for the local population through the creation of new jobs and more inclusive local value chains, thus creating a virtuous circle between businesses and territories. In addition, the circular economy can also become an element that boosts the competitiveness of regions, reinforces the personality and diversity of environments and societies as a key differentiation factor, and nurtures resilience as a principle for the current inevitably changing context.

The MED Cluster Circular Economy is part of the Mediterranean Clusters activity, programmed under the Work Package 2 Transfer of the Thematic Community Project (Community4Tourism) of the Sustainable Tourism Mission of the Interreg Euro-MED Programme.

According to the programme priorities and specific objectives, the MED Cluster Circular Economy will focus on the topics defined by the programme under the Specific Objective 2.6: Promoting the transition to a circular and resource-efficient economy (Greener Mediterranean Priority), which are the following:

• Reducing the environmental impact of the current linear production system.
• Overcoming the scarcity of natural resources and current overexploitation.
• Reducing waste production and its externalities.
• Encouraging the adoption of more sustainable economic models based on circular bioeconomy whilst fostering sustainable tourism.
• Exploiting the new economic opportunities offered by the circular economy model to the tourism sector.
• Cultivating of the ‘reuse’ philosophy in the touristic living areas.

In conclusion, underpinned by a transition to renewable energy and materials, the circular economy is a resilient system that is good for businesses, for the people, and for the environment. This cluster is the place where the dialogue between the Thematic Projects and different Mediterranean stakeholders tackling / linked to the circular economy becomes concrete, and creates the conditions for transferring and mainstreaming; aiming as well to foster the continuous exchange of collective knowledge about the topic through best practices, outputs, tools, ideas, policies, events coming from the Thematic Projects and to support the Dialogue4Tourism project of the Interreg Euro-MED programme in its objectives of implementing transformative policies and capitalisation mechanisms.

1. Introduction and explanation of the topic covered by the MED Cluster Circular Economy
2. State of the art from the International, European, and Mediterranean perspective
3. The projects’ approach
4. Main challenges and topics for discussion identified
5. Key documents