Assessing the sustainability of the European Green Deal and its interlin kages with the SDGs

Abstract

The European Green Deal (EGD) is the growth strategy for Europe, covering multiple domains, and aiming to an equitable, climate neutral European Union by 2050. The UN Agenda 2030, encompassing 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), establishes the foundation for a global sustainability transition. The integration of the SDGs into the EGD is an overlooked issue in the literature, despite Europe’s slow progress to achieve the sustainability targets. We employed a machine-learning text-mining method to evaluate the extent of SDG integration within the 74 EGD policy documents published during 2019–2023. The findings reveal a substantial alignment of EGD policies with SDGs related to clean energy (SDG7), climate action (SDG13), and sustainable consumption and production (SDG12). In contrast, there is a significant underrepresentation in areas related to social issues such as inequalities, poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, decent work, and peace, as indicated by lower alignment with SDGs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, and 16. Temporal trends suggest a marginal increase in the attention given to environmental health (especially water and marine life) and gender equality. Furthermore, we illustrate the alignment of EGD policies with the six essential sustainability transformations proposed by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) in 2019 for the operationalization of the SDGs. The results indicate that besides the prevalence of “Energy Decarbonization and Sustainable Industry”, all areas have received attention, except for the “Health, Wellbeing and Demography”. The findings call for a more integrated approach to address the complete spectrum of sustainability in a balanced manner.