• NUTS-2 regions
• circular economy
• convergence analysis
• DEA
• MSW

The current economic system requires a change of direction toward more sustainable patterns. In this transition the Circular Economy (CE) has a key role.
The EU, moving through a full CE, concerning waste is encouraging a Sustainable Waste Management (SWM) but notwithstanding the efforts potential secondary raw materials are still not used.
This study is aimed at assessing Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management performance at NUTS-2 regions’ level in order to examine EU directives effectiveness both at national and regional level and compare different performances.
First, a context analysis permitted to individualise the EU policies that influence the Member States’(MSs) waste management; the common targets and drivers are identified to define a framework suitable for every region that allows to understand the actual gaps in the transition from SWM to a full CE.
The main data reference is the Eurostat but due to the presence of missing data, for some countries, was integrated by external sources. The missed data assessment was done through multiple imputation bootstrap-based EMB algorithm. In total 167 NUTS-2 regions of 20 countries are considered as a dataset. The time frame examined is the periods 2008-2013.
The regional’s performance computation is done through the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Benefit-of-Doubt (BoD) characterised by the Composite indicator of performance constructed on the different waste treatment operations. As a result, the study presents an overall efficiency score and regions’ rank, based on the performance assessment, which allows to identify proper peers and benchmarking for each region, evaluate the effectiveness of EU policies and objectives. As last step, the study presents a convergence analysis between the MSs regions. This enables to compare and examine MSW management performances across EU and verify whether is there any convergence effect of EU legislation guiding towards EU targets and CE.