Page 96 [96]
94 | Gábor Szabó and Szabolcs Diósi
and steering projects, reports, and various strategic initiatives. Its leading
role is also reflected in Article 3.3 of the Treaty on European Union, stating
that the EU "shall work for the sustainable development of Europe based on
balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive social
market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high
level of protection and improvement of the guality of the environment.
The first extended, long-term European action plan that involved important
sustainable development elements was the Lisbon Strategy adopted in March
2000. In its ten-year-interval (2000-2010), it aimed to set the strategic goal to
make Europe the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy
in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better
jobs and greater social cohesion. In the end, the Strategy failed to deliver its
central promise: during the ten-year period, the EU did not become a more
competitive economy in the global market. However, it is important to note
that sustainable development-related goals were seen as some of its genuine
successes.
One year later, in June 2001, at the Gothenburg European Council meeting,
the Union adopted its first sustainable development strategy (A Sustainable
Europe for a Better World) based on a Commission Communication. This
was an ambitious long-term vision that had grown out of the broader global
Rio process. The strategy dealt in an integrated way with economic, social,
and environmental issues aiming to achieve economic growth, greater social
cohesion, and a better environment.
It was composed of two main parts. The first proposed objectives and
policy measures’ to tackle a number of key unsustainable trends,’ while the
second part called for a new approach to policymaking, which is able to
secure the EU policies’ future success. It asserted that there was no time for
further delay, urgent action was needed, and since the commitment towards
sustainable development would provoke many conflicting interests, strong
political leadership was essential.
It also claimed that since too often in complicated EU policymaking
processes actions made to achieve certain objectives in one policy area
5 It listed the following seven key policy areas: climate change and clean energy; sustainable
transport; sustainable consumption and production; conservation and management of
natural resources; public health; social inclusion, demography, and migration; and global
poverty.
7 The six key unsustainable trends it established were: growing emission of greenhouse gases
and climate change that is likely to cause more extreme weather events (e.g. hurricanes,
floods, wildfires); severe threats to public health that are posed by resistant strains of some
diseases; poverty and social exclusion that have immense direct effects on individuals,
such as ill health, suicide, and persistent unemployment; gradual ageing of the European
population that threatens a slowdown in the rate of economic growth, as well as the quality
and financial sustainability of pension schemes and public health care; the loss of bio¬
diversity in Europe that has accelerated dramatically in recent decades; persisting regional
imbalances in the EU.