Authors Iain Begg | Gabriel Glöckler | Anke Hassel ... - The Europaeum

Chapter 11
Reconciling Europe’s
competitiveness
with sustainable
development
Iain Begg
The idea of sustainable development resonates widely with policymakers
and the public alike, and is often found in documents or vision statements
mapping the way forward for both developed and developing economies.
It is one of the fundamental aims of the European Union, prominently set
out in article 2 of the Treaty on European Union and the Lisbon Treaty. In
2006, the EU agreed a revised Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS)
which not only updated the aims of the strategy that had been established
five years earlier, but elaborated the governance mechanisms intended to
advance these aims. Yet despite the enthusiasm for the concept and the
spread of initiatives and strategies, it is far from obvious either that the
current trajectory of economic development is sustainable or that inroads
are being made into global sustainability problems. An especially critical
view is offered by David G. Victor 1 who observes that “even as sustainable
development has become conventional wisdom over the past two decades,
something has gone horribly wrong”, and he notes the proliferation of
largely meaningless checklists and targets, rather than substantive
policies, whether in the environmental or social dimensions.
Since the Brundtland report (1987) first set out a comprehensive view of
sustainable development, the concept has been narrowed towards
environmental − especially climate change – and quality of life issues (a
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