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Ecological debt and sustainable development ] 95 hindered progress in another, coordination between different sectoral policies must be improved. It noted that the Union must engage more actively with the global community because in order to adeguately tackle the challenges ahead, global measures will be necessary (European Commission 2001a, 4-15). A few years later, in 2007, the European Commission asserted that while the Union should continue to focus on the challenges identified before, it must give particular attention to climate change-related problems (European Commission 2007, 14). In 2010, just two years after the emergence of the 2008 financial-economic crisis, the Europe 2020 Strategy was adopted. Its objective was to move the continent’s economy out of the crisis and lay the foundations for a more sustainable future built on smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth. By smart, the Strategy referred to an economy based on knowledge and innovation. Sustainable meant the active promotion of a more resource-efficient, greener, and more competitive economy; and inclusive growth meant fostering a highemployment economy that delivers social and territorial cohesion (European Commission 2010). The Union has mixed experiences with the implementation of this Strategy, which ended up being a ‘revised Lisbon Strategy’ rather than a new, innovative long-term vision. It mainly focused on EU domestic policies, and both its general scope and efficiency remained limited. Since the Member States took little ownership of the reforms and did not prioritise relevant actions, the Strategy ended up lacking actual governance and engagement, and thus had little effect on actual EU policymaking. As mentioned before, the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, in 2015 has generated a new wave of globally shared efforts for achieving sustainability. The EU played a leading role in creating the plan, and since its adoption it has made substantial steps towards its implementation. The European Commission's comprehensive “whole of government” approach on implementing the SDGs comprises several key elements aiming to effectively design and apply sustainable development policies (e.g. further coordination of economic policies, promoting the engagement of both civil society and the private sector, continuous monitoring and reporting on results, strengthening the EU’s engagement in international relations; see European Commission 2020c, 2-15). As of today, the Union stands out in the global community with its impressive SDGs record. All the ten countries that are the closest to attaining the 17 Goals of the 2030 Agenda are Member States of the EU (and from the top 20 best-performing countries, 17 are EU Member States).* EU countries usually obtain the best results on socio-economic development Goals - e.g. SDG 1 (No Poverty) or SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) - which comes 8 The order being: 1. Denmark, 2. Sweden, 3. Finland, 4. Austria, 5. Germany, 6. France, 7. Netherlands, 8. Czech Republic 9. Slovenia, 10. Estonia. See Sachs et al. 2020, 25-33.
