What drives high-value construction and demolition waste recycling in the EU?

• Most EU states meet CDW targets, but low value recovery dominates. • Wide gaps persist in high value CDW recycling across Europe. • Circular economy and innovation drive high value CDW recycling across Europe. • Structural market factors constrain high value CDW recycling. • Empirical analysis using econometric and machine learning models. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the drivers influencing the valorization of construction and demolition waste across European countries. While most EU member states have surpassed the 70% construction and demolition waste recovery targets, much of this recovery is achieved through low-value recycling methods such as backfilling. A considerable disparity remains in the share of construction and demolition waste recycled, ranging from below 50% in countries such as Greece, Portugal, and Ireland to nearly 100% in Italy and the Netherlands. To understand the underlying drivers, this study adopts a mixed-methods design that combines β-convergence analysis, panel data regression, and a random forest model, using EUROSTAT data for European countries over the period 2010–2022. The results indicate β-convergence in high-value construction and demolition waste recycling performance. Circular economy and innovation-related indicators exhibit significant and positive associations. At the same time, economic and market factors – economic growth, building permits, construction prices, and domestic material consumption show significant negative effects, suggesting structural barriers for high-value construction and demolition waste recycling. A random forest model corroborates those findings by identifying non-linear relationships and reinforcing the importance of policy-related variables. Overall, the findings suggest that progress in high-value construction and demolition waste recycling in Europe is closely linked to transformational policy and innovation capacity rather than to traditional economic expansion or market scale. These findings underscore the importance of aligning waste management policy and innovation efforts to counterbalance market-driven disincentives and promote a circular economy for construction materials.