Authorities throughout the EU continue to fund research and innovation in the field of circular economy at a national or regional level. Programme owners do so on the basis of their own mandates, though doubtlessly to a large extent in accordance with national and European priorities. Nevertheless, fragmentation of scarce resources, difficulties in implementing international synergies without a joint platform and lack of institutionalized outreach throughout Europe all hamper progress towards achieving common EU objectives. Moreover, the progress made in research and innovation underpinning circular economy varies throughout the EU. This calls for a strategic approach to the coordination of objectives and programming of the regional, national and European funding programmes throughout the area of research and innovation for a circular economy. A strategic approach would help build international synergies among programme owners (in order to overcome and avoid fragmentation), and strengthen dissemination of lessons learned and new solutions for the circular economy resulting from currently isolated national programmes and funding.