The latest news and updates from the access economy, and how item renting and sharing became that little bit easier in October 2026.
Europe’s first Access Economy Summit is coming to The Hague
On 23 March 2027, the City of The Hague and the Access Economy Alliance will host Europe’s first Access Economy Summit, a day dedicated to making item borrowing, renting and sharing as easy as buying.
The Summit will bring together municipalities, national governments, businesses, researchers and NGOs from across Europe for interactive workshops and sessions. The programme is built around three themes: making shared and rental items easier to find and access, encouraging more people to borrow and rent, and building business models that last.
It also brings together three Interreg projects working on the access economy: Access Hubs, Digital Kiosks and GOOD CITIES. Their partners will share what they’ve learned from piloting sharing stations, libraries of things and rental services in cities across Europe.
24 sharing stations deployed across Europe as part of Digital Kiosks
The Digital Kiosks project, co-funded by the Interreg North Sea Programme, tests interconnected self-service lockers (“sharing stations”) can make borrowing everyday items easier in European cities. 24 stations have now been deployed, exceeding the project’s original target of 22 stations. They were installed by six municipalities, a second-hand and repair shop and a housing provider, across eight cities in France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark.
Residents can borrow shared DIY tools, household appliances and sports equipment for free. With stations run by different types of organisations in very different local settings, the project now has a solid base of real-world use to learn from.
Tool rental app Bricolib passes 150,000 members
Bricolib is a French platform that lets people rent out tools sitting unused in their homes, from pressure washers and steam cleaners to trailers and mini-excavators. Its community grew from 100,000 to over 150,000 members in a year, and 82,000 tools are now available to rent across France. Members have earned nearly €300,000 by renting out their own tools.
Three new sharing pilots secure Interreg Europe funding
The GOOD CITIES project has secured Interreg Europe funding for three new sharing pilots in Hungary, the Netherlands and Greece. Each will test a different model: residential sharing hubs, public sharing stations and a municipal toy library. Lessons from all three will be shared across the network to inform policy in other European municipalities, turning local experiments into evidence other cities can use.
Right to Repair Europe calls for repair and reuse in the EU Circular Economy Act
Following the European Commission’s final stakeholder workshop on the upcoming Circular Economy Act, Right to Repair Europe warned that repair and reuse are largely missing from the plans, with the focus mainly on recycling and critical raw materials. The coalition is calling for binding reuse and repair targets, and for repair and reuse services to be built into national waste prevention plans. It also wants producer responsibility schemes to put reuse and repair before recycling, and has launched a petition to put repair and reuse in the first circular economy act.
We’d add that rental is missing too. Keeping items in use for longer depends on access as well as repair. We see this as a chance for organisations working on repair, reuse and access to push together for EU targets that sit further up the waste hierarchy.
French report calls for stronger support for product-as-a-service models
A report on the “économie de la fonctionnalité”, coordinated by French Senator Grégory Blanc, was recently presented to Mathieu Lefèvre, Minister Delegate for the Ecological Transition. The term covers business models where people pay to use a product rather than own it. The report brings together contributions from researchers, public bodies such as ADEME, and companies including Loxam and Orange. It sets out 16 policy proposals across legal protection, public spending, access to finance and accounting reform. These include letting local authorities recover VAT on long-term use and performance contracts, and opening public procurement to them. Its central argument is that current tax, accounting and banking rules were designed for selling products, which leaves the most sustainable models the hardest to finance.
Cirkel Supply skiwear rental launches in France
The Swiss skiwear rental provider, Cirkel, has expanded into France in partnership with Lizee, a platform that runs the operations behind rental and resale services. This means people going skiing in France can now rent high-quality ski clothing delivered straight to their holiday accommodation, rather than buying outfits most of us wear once a year at most. It shows what a good fit skiwear is for rental: it’s expensive, bulky to store and rarely used.
Poppins rental app launches map mode
The French rental platform Poppins has added a map view, so users can see what’s available to rent nearby, with daily prices shown on the map and the option to search a specific area. It’s a small change, but making it easy to find items close to home is one of the key things that makes renting feel as simple as buying.
Les Biens en Commun expands to Bordeaux
Les Biens en Commun self-service sharing stations are set to launch in Bordeaux in partnership with Naturalia, Franprix and Auchan Retail, which will bring its services to seven major French cities, including Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg, Marseille, Grenoble and Saint-Étienne. Its aim of “one drill per district, rather than one drill per household” is spreading fast across France.
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