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Ecological debt and sustainable development ] 97 Development Goals by the year 2030. Additionally, the Union is also facing a specific challenge, notably that there are significant performance gaps among its Member States. Generally speaking, the countries in Southern and Eastern Europe underperform in most SDGs compared to their northern and western counterparts. In order to improve its overall performance, the EU has moved towards a comprehensive sustainable development strategy over the past five years, which aims to transform its economy into a green, digital and circular economy. For that vision to be realised, three ambitious initiatives were adopted between 2015 and 2020: the European Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan, and a new European industrial and innovation strategy. We will take a closer look at all the three of them. a. The European Green Deal The European Green Deal constitutes the EU’s most significant response to climate and environmental-related challenges so far.!! The new green growth strategy aims to transform the EU into a fair and prosperous society with a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy, where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases by the year 2050, the environment and the health of citizens are protected, and economic growth is decoupled from resource use. The European Green Deal asserts that our current economic model must go through a transition to a climate-neutral, climate-resilient, and environmentally sustainable economy (European Commission 2019a, 6-24). It looks at this transition not only as a challenge, but also as an opportunity to make the new economy model just and inclusive for all by creating new opportunities for innovation and investment, creating jobs, addressing energy poverty, reducing external energy dependency, and improving citizens’ health and well-being. It is worth noting that the EU had already started to modernise and transform its economy with the aim of reaching a greener economy. Between 1990 and 2018, it reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 23 per cent, while the economy grew by 61 per cent. However, current policies would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 (European Commission 2019a, 4); thus, much remains to be done in the coming decades. In order to set out the conditions for an effective and fair transition, to provide predictability, and to ensure that this transition is irreversible, in 2021 the EU reached an agreement on the first European climate law. This " In December 2019, the Commission presented a Communication on the European Green Deal, and a month later, in January 2020, the European Parliament voted in support of the initiative (with a large majority of 482 votes in favour, 136 against, and 95 abstentions).
