Nachhaltiges Europa Abschlusspublikation - Global Marshall Plan

No stimulation for public understanding, no lead-
ership.
The EU-SDS has an additive rather than integrative
character. The strategy is scattered over sev-
eral documents and lacks an accessible and understandable
message, which considerably weakens
its impact on everyday decision-making. This for-
mat does not stimulate public participation. Its
messages have received extremely limited public
attention, and even among small expert circles its
influence has not been great. Accordingly, the EU-
SDS does not provide the necessary leadership
and its impact on public debate is limited. So far,
the EU-SDS has not strengthened civil society en-
gagement.
Missing link to national SD Councils and Strategies
and to civil society.
The EU-SDS does not contain an adequate mechanism
to involve civil society. National Councils for
Sustainable Development could provisde one useful
channel for expanding this engagement. There
are now in Europe several national Councils for
Sustainable Development, which have often developed
from rather scientific, environment-oriented
institutions into organisations engaging a broad
range of stakeholders, reflecting civil society. On
the national level, some national Councils for Sus-
tainable Development have already recommended
establishing linkages between the national SD
Strategy in their respective country and the EU.
There are examples for issue specific strategies –
such as those relating to waste for example – that
are driven by the need to meet the requirements
of EU Directives. For other domestic goals and tar-
gets, conditional targets (a national target is valid
only if EU decides to set up a European target, see
esp. the issue of climate change) are introduced.
However, these examples are somewhat scattered.
The lack of a specific strategy for linking EU
SD policy to national policies is a serious weak-
ness. For example the liberalisation of the electricity
and gas markets will require accompanying
measures to ensure sustainability on both national
and EU level.
Lack of interaction between national and European
level.
Currently, national SD Strategies and the EU-SDS
are developing in isolation from each other. There
is no formal or informal co-ordination between EU
organs and national institutions. Instead, the ex-
change of ideas between the European and national
strategies is primarily based on informal and
somewhat coincidental discussions between in-
volved individuals, resulting in limited interaction
between the EU-SDS and national SD Strategies.
Nachhaltiges Europa
Accordingly, their environmental targets and indi-
cators differ considerably. Only occasionally have
these targets apparentlyinfluenced each other.
Some national SD Strategies envisage an ambi-
tious set of specific targets and timeframes,3
whereas the EU-SDS does not contain these or
similar targets and timeframes. There is a current
lack of interaction between the European and the
national level, the wording of national SD Strategies
is often vague and omits specific EU-related
commitments and timeframes.
A poor long-term and political perspective.
The strategy does thus not present a consistent
approach in line with a long-term and politically
binding strategy to cope with the unsustainable
trends in economic, social and ecological challenges.
Although the EU-SDS takes account of the
need to adopt specific measures, it occasionally
fails to set measures specific in scope and timeframe.
The EU-SDS lacks clear targets to replace
old technology, to increase the share of environ-
mentally friendly cars by 2010 or to reduce CO2
emissions in the order of 60 % by 2050, as proposed
by Prime Ministers Blair and Persson in their
letter to the Greek Presidency of 25 February
2003.
Proposed cut in the number of indicators is side-
lining the core idea of sustainability.
The list of more than 40 European indicators (with
seven covering the environment) reflects the scat-
tered character of the EU-SDS as these indicators
do not necessarily correspond with the areas covered
by the SDS and by Member States SD
Strategies. Instead of clarifying and streamlining
these indicators the European Commission recently
proposed to cut the number of environment
related indicators from seven to one. The cut is
part of an overall reduction of the number of indicators
used to measure the Lisbon process. The
cut is sidelining environmental and SD indicators.
As a late addition to the Lisbon process the Gothenburg
European Council 2001 introduced a list of
seven environmental indicators. Now, only the indicator
for greenhouse gas emissions remains. The
short list categorises two other indicators (energy
intensity and volume of transport) as indicators of
‘environmental’ aspects of sustainable develop-
ment’, but it is doubtful that the implementation of
these indicators will set the appropriate context for
an adequate environmental assessment.
3 E.g. energy and resource efficiency shall have doubled by 2020 (compared to 1990 respectively 1994), transport
shall be reduced by 5 % (goods) and 20 % (persons) by 2020 (compared to 1999), exposure of the population
to significant air pollutants shall be reduced by 70 % in 2010 (compared to 1990).
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