Content uploaded by Matteo Mandelli
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Matteo Mandelli on Jan 15, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
113Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Chapter 6
Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into the
European Semester: a governance conundrum for the von
der Leyen Commission?
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
Introduction1
In ‘My agenda for Europe’ published in September 2019, then-candidate for President of
the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen renewed2 her intention to ‘refocus the
European Semester into an instrument that integrates the United Nations Sustainable Dev-
elopment Goals’ (von der Leyen 2019a: 9, bold in original removed). This intention came to
the surprise of many, largely because no further details were provided on how, concretely,
a process dealing with economic, scal and social policies in the European Union (EU) and
its Member States – the European Semester – should be adapted to include the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are key elements of a complex global framework that,
besides pursuing economic and social aims, also has a strong environmental dimension.
Prudence in this respect seemed to characterise the stance of the Council of the European
Union at the time, with national ministers asking for more information on the Commission’s
intention while emphasising that the main function of the Semester was the coordination
of Member States’ economic, scal and employment policies (Council of the EU 2019b: 11).
Von der Leyen’s announcement was just the most recent outcome of a debate on how to
implement the United Nations’ (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development3 and its
17 SDGs at EU level, a discussion ongoing since 2016. This chapter addresses this debate,
with a view to understanding the origins of the Commission’s proposal to integrate the
SDGs into the European Semester. It also tackles the possible implications of this decision
for the Semester, assessing its potential to bring about a comprehensive implementation
of the UN 2030 Agenda and its SDGs at EU level. This is indeed a challenge that can be
seen as a veritable governance conundrum confronting the von der Leyen Commission.
To be sure, the challenge of how to implement sustainable development in the EU is not
new, in many respects pre-dating the UN 2030 Agenda and the SDGs. Hence, a closer
look at the strengths and shortcomings of previous attempts in this direction may prove
useful in order to fully understand the contours of the issues at stake and provide insights
of use in evaluating more recent decisions and proposals.4
1. The authors are extremely grateful to the editors of this volume and an anonymous external reviewer for their
feedback on previous versions of this chapter. The usual disclaimer applies.
2. Von der Leyen (2019b: 5) had already expressed this resolution in her opening statement in the European
Parliament on 16 July 2019.
3. Hereafter referred to as ‘the UN 2030 Agenda’ or ‘the 2030 Agenda’.
4. It appears important to specify that in this chapter we deal with sustainable development and the implementation of
the SDGs through cross-cutting EU strategies such as the EU SDS and Europe 2020 and their associated governance
mechanisms (in particular, the European Semester). By contrast, we do not deal with an important aspect of EU actions
to mainstream sustainable development in EU policies, i.e. the various forms of impact assessment conducted by the
Commission to assess the environmental, social and economic impact of major pieces of legislation or policy initiatives.
Consequently, in this analysis we try to adopt a long-term perspective. Notably, after a
short description of the history of the UN’s engagement with sustainable development
(Section 1), in Section 2 we look at the key elements of the most prominent strategy put
forward by the EU to promote sustainable development before the UN 2030 Agenda:
the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU SDS), launched in 2001. Section 3
deals with the initiatives undertaken by the Juncker Commission to integrate the
UN 2030 Agenda and the SDGs into existing EU policy-making frameworks. Section
4 investigates the dynamics behind the decision of the von der Leyen Commission to
refocus the Semester to integrate the SDGs, the rationale of this choice and how such a
decision has been translated in the 2020 European Semester. The concluding section
oers some reections on the potential and limitations of using the European Semester
as a means for implementing the UN 2030 Agenda and its SDGs, also shedding light on
the most recent developments following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This chapter relies on a thorough analysis of relevant (mostly EU) policy documents,
complemented by a selective literature review as well as by ndings from six semi-
structured interviews with Commission ocials closely involved in the European
Semester conducted in June and September 2020. These interviews provided important
background information for the research, helping us to deepen our understanding of
certain issues that did not fully and clearly emerge from the document analysis.
1. The United Nations and sustainable development
1.1 The evolution of the UN discourse on sustainability:
from the Brundtland report to the Millennium Development Goals
The theoretical discussion around sustainable development originally arose in
economic studies related to the capacity of limited planetary resources to sustain
human existence over time (Mensah 2019). Since the early 1970s, the UN has been one
of the most active organizations in promoting sustainable development through various
high-level initiatives. In ‘Our Common Future’, a report by the World Commission
on Environment and Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission),
sustainable development is dened as a path that ‘[…] meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (United
Nations 1987: par. 27).
Before 2000, the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability
were handled separately at UN level, with dedicated initiatives and agencies. With the
‘Millennium Declaration’ adopted in September 2000, things changed radically (United
Nations 2000). The declaration was associated with eight ‘Millennium Development
Goals’ (MDGs)5 to be achieved by 2015 at global level. The MDGs inaugurated a new era
5. The MDGs were (1) eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; (2) achieve universal primary education; (3) promote
gender equality and empower women; (4) reduce child mortality; (5) improve maternal health; (6) combat HIV/
AIDS, malaria and other diseases; (7) ensure environmental sustainability; and (8) develop a global partnership
for development.
114 Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
115Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into the European Semester
in the international commitment to sustainable development characterized by a global
governance model based on goal-setting (Biermann et al. 2017). Such an approach
continued after the expiration of the MDGs in 2015, when the UN revisited and renewed
its sustainable development agenda. The MDGs were often criticized for their limited
scope and for their top-down approach (Fukuda-Parr 2016), having been constructed at
the highest UN political level and constituting an aid agenda mainly targeting developing
countries. Having in mind the pitfalls and limitations of the MDGs, the UN attempted
to endorse a transformative global and participative developmental model through the
UN 2030 Agenda and the SDGs.
1.2 The UN 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals
In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development’ (United Nations 2015). The 2030 Agenda is meant to be a plan to transform
the world through a sustainable pathway of development, stimulating collaborative
actions by UN members and stakeholders in promoting the three dimensions of
sustainable development: social, environmental and economic. These dimensions
are recognised as closely linked, and objectives related to them should be pursued in
a balanced manner (ibid: par. 2). Social, environmental and economic concerns are
explicitly reected in three of the ve ‘areas of critical importance’ identied in the
2030 Agenda: people, planet and prosperity (ibid: Preamble).6 The rst area refers to
granting equality of opportunities to all and ghting poverty and inequality. The second
tackles environmental protection, also promoting sustainable consumption, production
and natural resources management. Finally, prosperity means ‘ensur[ing] that all
human beings can enjoy prosperous and fullling lives and that economic, social and
technological progress occurs in harmony with nature’ (ibid: Preamble).
The 2030 Agenda contains seventeen Sustainable Development Goals to be reached by
2030 at global level (see Box 1). The SDGs are thematic objectives associated with 169
qualitative and quantitative targets and accompanied by 232 indicators.
The 2030 Agenda and its SDGs are considered a turning point in the global governance
of sustainable development. Indeed, the SDGs and their targets should be considered
as ‘integrated and indivisible, global in nature and universally applicable, taking into
account dierent national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting
national policies and priorities’ (United Nations 2015: par. 55). By advancing a set
of multifaceted, complex and interlinked goals, the 2030 Agenda sets out a holistic
sustainable development path, i.e. a common direction for countries around the globe
towards wellbeing (Monaco 2018). Key to this holistic model is the integrated nature of
the SDGs, as the goals should be achieved simultaneously. Attaining the 2030 Agenda
thus crucially depends on whether synergies between the SDGs can be boosted and
6. The other two areas of the 2030 Agenda are (1) peace, i.e. creating peaceful, just and inclusive societies; and
(2) partnership, which refers to the means for implementation of the 2030 Agenda (United Nations 2015:
Preamble). ‘People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership’ are usually known as the ve pillars of the 2030
Agenda.
trade-os eectively tackled (Pradhan et al. 2017). The idea of sustainable development
put forward in the 2030 Agenda is known as ‘the triple bottom line’ approach (O’Connor
2007; Schweikert et al. 2018), postulating the need for a continuous dialogue of values,
principles and policies, with a view to balancing the social, economic and environmental
dimensions of sustainability and to solving potential conicts.
Box 1 The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
Goal 1 End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
Goal 2 End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
Goal 3 Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
Goal 4 Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Goal 5 Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Goal 6 Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
Goal 7 Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
Goal 8 Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and
decent work for all.
Goal 9 Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.
Goal 10 Reduce inequality within and among countries.
Goal 11 Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
Goal 12 Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
Goal 13 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
Goal 14 Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
Goal 15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests,
combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
Goal 16 Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all
and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
Goal 17 Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable
Development.
Source: United Nations (2015).
Governments are expected to take ownership of the SDGs (whose achievement is a
shared responsibility), establishing national, regional and supranational frameworks
for their implementation, monitoring and review (United Nations 2015). The UN
reports yearly on global progress towards achieving them and has created a dedicated
body responsible for conducting follow-ups and reviews, known as the ‘UN High-Level
Political Forum’ (Eurostat 2020). Nonetheless, the UN has no binding power to enforce
the SDGs, with national governments submitting their reviews on the implementation
of the SDGs on a voluntary basis. This goal-setting global governance model indeed
functions through ambitious political aspirations complemented by weak international
institutional arrangements (Biermann et al. 2017), granting greater room for manoeuvre
for national preferences in implementation. Not only are the SDGs non-binding, but
the 169 targets are mostly generic and qualitative, meaning that states are relatively
autonomous in setting their own context-specic targets (ibid). A major challenge is
thus to adapt the implementation of the SDGs to specic national contexts and priorities,
without compromising the global and unitary ambition of the 2030 Agenda.
116 Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
117Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into the European Semester
2. The EU and sustainable development: the early steps
2.1 The origins of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy: 2001–2002
The EU has traditionally been an active participant in and supporter of UN debates
and initiatives on sustainable development. Following the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam,
achieving a ‘balanced and sustainable development’ was included among the objectives
of the Union, as dened in the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) (Article 2). The
current version of the TEU, as amended by the 2007 Lisbon Treaty signed in December
2007, states that ‘[the Union] 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 quality of the environment’ (Article 3(3) TEU).
At the 19th Special Session of the United Nations’ General Assembly in 1997, the EU
undertook to draw up a strategy for sustainable development. A proposal by the European
Commission on a European Sustainable Development Strategy was subsequently
published in May 2001 (European Commission 2001) and adopted by the European
Council in June that same year (European Council 2001). The 2001 EU SDS was then
renewed in 2006 (European Commission 2005; Council of the European Union 2006).
While it is impossible in this chapter to provide a full account of the evolution of the EU
SDS, we present a summary of its key features.
Relying on the denition of sustainable development elaborated by the Brundtland
Commission in 1987 (see Section 1), the 2001 EU SDS was based on the assumption
that economic, social and environmental policies were to be made mutually reinforcing.
Importantly, the EU SDS adopted a long-term perspective, with a focus on the positive
impact in terms of environmental quality, growth and employment that sustainable
policies were to have in the long term. However, it was also recognised that required
changes would entail dicult trade-os between conicting interests, especially in the
short term (European Commission 2001: 4).
While acknowledging the broad scope of sustainable development, the 2001 Commission
proposal was to adopt a targeted approach, focusing on a few salient issues (European
Commission 2001). Notably, both the 2001 and the 2006 versions featured relatively
more environmental challenges than social ones (European Commission 2001; Council
of the EU 2006),7 a disparity mirroring the fact that the EU SDS was designed to add
an environmental dimension to the Lisbon Strategy, a strategy dealing mainly with
economic and social policies.
The implementation of the original EU SDS relied on an annual stocktaking exercise
based on a synthesis report drafted by the Commission and presented at spring
7. The ‘key challenges’ of the EU SDS in 2006 were (1) climate change and clean energy; (2) sustainable transport;
(3) sustainable consumption and production; (4) conservation and management of natural resources; (5) public
health; (6) social inclusion, demography and migration; and (7) global poverty and sustainable development
challenges (Council of the EU 2006).
European Council meetings, with government leaders expected to review progress on
all dimensions of sustainability. For their part, Member States were invited to elaborate
their national sustainable development strategies. The exercise was supported by
Eurostat which, in 2001, started publishing annual reports on ‘Measuring Sustainable
Development in the EU’ (cf. Eurostat 2015). The 2006 revision of the EU SDS
identied governance arrangements as a weak point. Consequently, new, strengthened
implementation and monitoring procedures were set up by the Council of the EU
(2006), requiring the Commission to submit biannual progress reports. Importantly,
at the same time as the EU SDS was being renewed (2005), the Lisbon Strategy was
also overhauled, resulting in the ‘re-launched’ Lisbon Strategy prioritising growth
and employment and enhancing competitiveness, while largely side-lining social and
environmental ambitions (cf., among others, Armstrong 2010).
2.2 The 2009 review of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy
and Europe 2020
The second progress report on the EU SDS – presented as a ‘review’ of the strategy
– was released by the Commission in July 2009, in a context characterised by the
outbreak of the nancial and economic crisis and in parallel to the elaboration of the
new EU growth strategy for the 2010s, the successor to the Lisbon Strategy. The report
(European Commission 2009: 14-15) proposed to refocus the EU SDS on a number
of long-term goals in crucial areas, notably transitioning to a low-carbon and low-
input economy, intensifying environmental eorts, promoting social inclusion and
strengthening the international dimension of sustainable development. Furthermore,
the Commission – later endorsed by the Council of the EU (2009) – proposed creating
better linkages between the EU SDS and the post-Lisbon strategy, inter alia using the
latter’s governance mechanisms to monitor implementation of the former (ibid: 14).
This new overarching growth strategy – Europe 2020 – was launched by the Barroso II
Commission in March 2010 (European Commission 2010). Its aim was to turn the EU
into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. The implementation of Europe 2020
was organised through a new ‘European Semester for economic policy coordination’.
Launched in 2011, the Semester is an annual policy coordination cycle aimed at
synchronising and coordinating the diverse instruments and procedures linked to the
reformed ‘Stability and Growth Pact’ and activities associated with the Europe 2020
Strategy.8
8. For a comprehensive description of the functioning of the Semester, see Zeitlin and Vanhercke (2018).
118 Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
119Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into the European Semester
3. The Juncker Commission, the 2030 Agenda and the
Sustainable Development Goals
3.1 The EU and the new 2030 Agenda: the starting point
Starting in 2012, EU institutions published several policy documents delineating the
position of the EU in the negotiations at UN level to elaborate the post-2015 Sustainable
Development Agenda. An analysis of these documents9 shows that the positions taken
by the EU were largely in line with the key features and the logic of what was to become
the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs (see Section 1).
After the adoption of the UN 2030 Agenda, the European Commission led by Jean-
Claude Juncker published, in November 2016, a Communication on ‘Next steps
for a sustainable European future – European action for sustainability’ (European
Commission 2016a). The Communication aimed at mapping European policies
already contributing to the 17 SDGs, with a view to facilitating their integration into
the European policy framework (ibid: 3). Furthermore, the Commission undertook
to launch a reection work to prepare the long-term implementation of the SDGs in
the post-Europe 2020 period. According to the above-mentioned Communication,
most of the SDGs were already included in the Juncker Commission’s priorities and
an array of EU policies and nancial instruments – such as, just to mention a few, the
Common Agricultural Policy, environmental policies, energy policy and trade policy
– were already contributing to the achievement of the 17 SDGs. Alongside sectoral
policies and initiatives, the Europe 2020 Strategy and the European Semester were
considered by the European Commission (2016a: 2) as key processes for achieving and
monitoring the SDGs. In particular, the Semester – whose rationale was deemed in
line with ‘promoting a more sustainable socio-economic model in the European Union’
(European Commission 2016a: 15) – was already featuring specic initiatives supposed
to deliver on 10 SDGs10 setting economic and social objectives (European Commission
2016a, 2016b).
The Commission undertook to monitor, report and review progress towards the SDGs
in the EU context by publishing, as of 2017, regular reports. Eurostat started work on a
comprehensive set of EU SDG indicators, adopted by the European Statistical System in
May 2017. These form the statistical basis for the annual ‘Monitoring report on progress
towards the SDGs in an EU context’, which Eurostat has been publishing since 2017 (cf.
Eurostat 2020).
9. Cf. European Commission (2013, 2014, 2015); Council of the EU (2013, 2014, 2015).
10. In Particular SDGs 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 16 were already pursued by the European Semester, according to the
Commission’s 2016 evaluation.
3.2 Integrating sustainable development into EU policymaking:
the main limitations of Europe 2020 and the Semester
Despite the European Commission recognizing in 2016 how ‘ultimately sustainable
development is an issue of governance’ (European Commission 2016a: 14), according
to some observers, governance failures greatly hindered implementation of the
previous EU SDS (Domorenok 2019). On one hand, the EU SDS relied on light forms
of coordination, while, on the other hand, it was not suciently integrated into EU’s
overarching growth strategies. Indeed, governance mechanisms linking the EU SDS
with the Lisbon Strategy and Europe 2020 had always been weak, and the EU SDS
ultimately remained peripheral in EU policymaking, to the extent that it was barely
mentioned in the Commission Communication reacting to the newly established UN
2030 Agenda and the SDGs (European Commission 2016a). Indeed, apart from the
regular release of the annual Eurostat monitoring reports, the EU SDS seems to have
disappeared from the radar in the mid-2010s.
The most probable explanation for this is that the mainstreaming of sustainable
development into the Europe 2020 strategy since 2010 (European Commission 2016a:
2) (implicitly) tolled the death knell for the EU SDS. This is obviously at odds with the
stated aim to link the EU SDS more closely to Europe 2020. At a strategic level, the three
(supposedly mutually reinforcing) dimensions of the new growth pattern proposed by
Europe 2020 – i.e. smart, sustainable and inclusive (European Commission 2010) –
were somehow equated to the three dimensions of sustainable development (European
Commission 2016a: 2). However, the thematic areas covered by Europe 2020 did
not fully correspond to the 17 SDGs, with environmental issues in particular limited
to energy and resource eciency (Domorenok 2019). Moreover, while highlighting
synergies between economic, social and environmental objectives, very little attention
was given to possible tensions and trade-os.
Mirroring the original architecture of Europe 2020, the Semester has mainly covered
economic and social policies over the past few years. While its initial focus was on
macroeconomic and scal measures, attention to social policies in the Semester has
gradually increased (Zeitlin and Vanhercke 2018) in terms of both substantive outcomes
and procedural aspects. As for the latter, an increasingly central role has been gained by
institutional social actors, with the Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment,
Social Aairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL) being included in the Semester’s ‘core DGs’
since 2014, alongside the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Aairs (DG
ECFIN), the Secretariat-General and the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs
Union (DG TAXUD) (ibid). Conversely, the ‘environmental dimension’ of the Semester
has historically been underdeveloped and mostly focused on issues related to energy
policies, while policies ghting environmental degradation and climate change were
never explicitly included among the key priorities of the Semester’s Annual Growth
Surveys (AGSs) (Charveriat and Bodin 2020; Sabato and Mandelli 2018). The relatively
scarce references to these policy areas emphasised the creation of synergies and ‘win-
win situations’ between environmental protection on one hand and economic growth
and social progress on the other hand, with little attention paid to their trade-os.
120 Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
121Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into the European Semester
3.3 The legacy of the Juncker Commission
Following its commitment given in 2016, the Commission launched a reection on
the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs at EU level in the post-2020
period, with a high-level multi-stakeholder platform set up to draft recommendations.
This consultation resulted in the publication (in January 2019) of a reection
paper, ‘Towards a Sustainable Europe by 2030’ (European Commission 2019a). In
it, the Commission links the implementation of the SDGs to what it denes as the
‘sustainability transition’, i.e. the transition towards a climate-neutral EU economy by
2050. Among the policy priorities, which the reection paper refers to as the ‘policy
foundations for a sustainable future’ (European Commission 2019a: 15), ‘ensuring a
socially fair transition’ is considered key to the sustainability transition, since, in order
to be successful, it would need to rely on strong social support. In this respect, specic
actions were deemed necessary to address the possible socio-economic trade-os of
the transition, making sure that ‘no one is left behind’ (ibid). In the view of the Juncker
Commission, the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) would
be fundamental, with the Pillar directly contributing to the achievement of no fewer
than eight SDGs (European Commission 2019a: 58-63).11
The same 2019 paper included ‘governance and ensuring policy coherence at all levels’
among the fundamental ‘horizontal enablers’ for the sustainability transition. Due to
the cross-cutting and inter-linked nature of the SDGs, better coordination between
dierent levels of governance, strong cooperation between administrations and,
ultimately, enhanced coherence across dierent policy areas would be crucial for their
eective implementation (European Commission 2019a: 29).
Launching a debate on how to eectively implement the SDGs in the future and how
to link them to the EU post-2020 Agenda, the Juncker Commission proposed three
scenarios. The rst was to set up an overarching EU SDG strategy guiding all actions
of the EU and Member States (i.e. the new EU overarching strategy following from
Europe 2020 would be a fully-edged Sustainable Development Strategy). The second
would consist of continuing the mainstreaming of the SDGs in all relevant EU policies
by the Commission, but not enforcing Member State action. In the last scenario, the
focus would be mainly on external actions for sustainability, with priority given
to ‘helping the rest of the world catch up, while pursuing improvements at EU level’
(European Commission 2019a: 38).
Confronted with the Commission’s reection paper, the Council of the EU did not
express any clear endorsement of a specic scenario. Instead – recalling the Presidency
Conclusions of the European Council in October 2018 (European Council 2018: par. 12)
11. Notably, SDG 1 (end poverty in all its forms everywhere), SDG 3 (ensure healthy lives and promote well-being
for all at all ages), SDG 4 (ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all), SDG 5 (achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls), SDG 8 (promote
sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all),
SDG 10 (reduce inequality within and among countries), SDG 11 (make cities and human settlements inclusive,
safe, resilient and sustainable), and SDG 17 (strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global
Partnership for Sustainable Development).
– it urged the Commission to draft an implementation strategy for the 2030 Agenda,
‘[building] upon elements of the scenarios presented in the Commission’s Reection
Paper’ (Council of the EU 2019a: par. 7). Such an implementation strategy should be
‘comprehensive [...], outlining timelines, objectives and concrete measures to reect the
2030 Agenda and mainstream the SDGs in all relevant EU internal and external policies’
(ibid: par. 8). Importantly, to avoid duplication and excessive red tape, the monitoring
and reporting systems of the implementation strategy should use existing mechanisms,
including ‘where relevant’ the European Semester (Council of the EU 2019a: par. 12).
4. The von der Leyen Commission and the integration of the
SDGs in the Semester
4.1 The new Commission between policy layering and policy innovation
On being designated President of the European Commission in summer 2019, Ursula
von der Leyen was confronted with various options (and pressures) on how to concretely
implement the SDGs at EU level. The solution ultimately adopted consisted of a mix of
elements, including (a) elaborating a new overarching growth strategy, the European
Green Deal (EGD) – which, while not strictly dedicated to implementing the 2030
Agenda, is in many respects in line with it; (b) continuing the mainstreaming of the
SDGs in EU policies; and (c) integrating the SDGs into the Semester.
Looking specically at the EGD, a few elements appear particularly relevant for this
chapter (see Laurent, this volume, for a comprehensive analysis). The EGD was
presented as an integral part of the EU strategy to implement the UN 2030 Agenda and
the SDGs (European Commission 2019b: 3). Indeed, the EGD has some elements of
continuity with both the previous EU SDS and the notion of ‘sustainability transition’
outlined in the 2019 Commission reection paper. First, the EGD explicitly sets the
ght against climate change and the improvement of the environment – two themes
traditionally envisaged by the previous EU SDS – as its priority objectives. Second, the
eight ‘interlinked and mutually reinforcing’ macro-areas for EGD action12 signicantly
overlap with the four ‘policy foundations for a sustainable future’ that should have
characterised the implementation of the 2030 Agenda according to the 2019 reection
paper. Third, the EGD points out that achieving high environmental standards is
not incompatible with promoting growth and social progress. On the contrary, these
objectives can be mutually reinforcing. However, unlike Europe 2020, greater attention
is paid to possible trade-os – strongly characterising previous discourses linked to the
EU SDS – including possible negative social implications of the green transition.
12. The macro-areas for action of the EGD are (European Commission 2019b: 4) 1) increasing the EU’s climate
ambition for 2030 and 2050; 2) supplying clean, aordable and secure energy; 3) mobilising industry for a clean
and circular economy; 4) building and renovating in an energy and resource ecient way; 5) accelerating the
shift to sustainable and smart mobility; 6) from ‘Farm to Fork’: designing a fair, healthy and environmentally-
friendly food system; 7) preserving and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity; 8) a zero pollution ambition for a
toxic-free environment.
122 Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
123Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into the European Semester
The second element of the Commission’s plan for implementing the UN 2030 Agenda
was to mainstream the SDGs in EU policies. To do so, the President of the Commission
tasked each Commissioner with implementing the SDGs in their respective policy areas,
though attributing responsibility for the overall implementation of the SDGs to the
College as a whole. A coordinating role for implementing the SDGs in the European
Semester was assigned to the Commissioner for the Economy Paolo Gentiloni (von der
Leyen 2019c: 4). As revealed in our interviews, this kind of mainstreaming is expected
to ensure the eective integration of the SDGs into EU policies ‘as a sort of guiding
chapeau’, even in the absence of a dedicated implementation strategy.
Finally, according to our interviewees, the decision to refocus the European Semester
as an instrument integrating the SDGs can also be read as part of von der Leyen’s
commitment to place sustainability high on the EU agenda. However, the new President
initially provided no further details as to what extent and how the SDGs would actually
be included in the EU socio-economic governance process.
Confronted with this situation, the Council of the EU (2019b) noted in its conclusions of
10 December 2019 that, notwithstanding their repeated requests, a comprehensive EU
implementation strategy for the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs was still missing. It urged
the Commission to elaborate such a strategy ‘without further delay’ (ibid: par. 19). The
Council also raised concerns about Commission’s decision to assign responsibility
for implementing the SDGs to the College as a whole, thereby potentially weakening
policymaking coherence (par. 14). To avoid this risk, according to the Council, such
a ‘whole-of-Commission approach’ should have been buttressed by attributing overall
responsibility to one member of the College at the highest level (ibid). Furthermore, the
Council appeared quite prudent on refocusing the Semester on the SDGs, asking for
more information on how the Commission intended to do so and explicitly recalling that
the Semester is a coordination tool for the economic, scal and employment policies in
the Member States (11).
An answer in this respect arrived one week after the Council meeting, with the
publication on 17 December 2019 of the Commission’s Annual Sustainable Growth
Strategy (ASGS), kicking o the 2020 Semester.
4.2 The Sustainable Development Goals in the 2020 European Semester
In its 2020 Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy – renamed to highlight the notion of
sustainability in this key EU document – the Commission puts forward the two key
strategic frameworks at the heart of the new Semester: the European Green Deal and
the UN SDGs. Indeed, the Semester is expected to contribute to implementing the new
EU overarching growth strategy (European Commission 2019c: 1), while at the same
time it is considered a framework that ‘can help drive [economic, social and scal]
policies towards the achievement of the SDGs by monitoring progress and ensuring
closer coordination of national eorts in the area of economic and employment policies’
(European Commission 2019c: 13).
These two broad strategic frameworks are seen as compatible, insofar as, in the view
of the Commission, ‘[the EGD] puts sustainability – in all of its senses – and the
well-being of citizens at the centre of our action’ (ibid, bold removed from original).
In order to link the two frameworks, the ASGS is built around what the Commission
denes as a ‘broader economic narrative’ (European Commission 2019c: 13), based on
the notion of ‘competitive sustainability’. The latter, presented as ‘a new paradigm to
address interrelated key challenges’ (ibid), rests on four dimensions: (a) environmental
sustainability; (b) productivity growth; (c) fairness; and (d) macro-economic stability.
The rst dimension focuses on achieving the key objectives of the EGD – the ght against
climate change and the transition to climate neutrality. According to the Commission,
a ‘reinforced’ Semester (i.e. with a more developed environmental dimension) could
be a fundamental instrument providing specic guidance to Member States on how
to achieve these objectives (European Commission 2019c: 5). Productivity growth
and innovation are seen as key to ensure future income and employment growth
(ibid: 6). Fairness should be ensured rst by ‘fully deliver[ing] on the Principles of the
European Pillar of Social Rights’ (European Commission 2019c: 9, bold removed from
original). Fairness should also encompass a territorial and sector-specic dimension,
as the renewed Semester should provide guidance for the implementation of the Just
Transition Mechanism proposed in the EGD (European Commission 2019c: 10).13
Finally, macro-economic stability is considered as a ‘ precondition to ensure resilience
against future shocks and facilitate the transformation [of the economy]’ (European
Commission 2019c: 11).
The notion of competitive sustainability can be seen as a link between the UN 2030
Agenda and President von der Leyen’s growth strategy, the EGD. In the view of several
of our interviewees from the European Commission, this notion is an important
‘paradigm change’ compared to the past insofar as it highlights the word ‘sustainability’,
to be achieved while ensuring that the European economy remains able to compete with
the rest of the world. In this sense, competitive sustainability would represent a partial
departure from the narrative of the Europe 2020 strategy: while promoting growth
and competitiveness were the main objectives of Europe 2020, in the ASGS 2020 these
objectives are presented as enabling conditions for the shift towards sustainability.
As noted by one of our interviewees, in this perspective competitiveness (which in the
ASGS is specically conceived in terms of productivity growth) could be considered
an addition to the traditional dimensions of economic, social and environmental
sustainability.
Thus, the broad understanding of the ASGS entails that, to a varying extent, each of the
dimensions of competitive sustainability encompasses and tries to link environmental,
economic and social concerns, as these dimensions are considered ‘closely interrelated
and mutually reinforcing’ (European Commission 2019c: 3). However, taking on board
one of the basic concerns of the notion of sustainable development, the focus in the 2020
ASGS is also on the identication of possible trade-os between environmental, social
and economic policies (ibid: 14). The integration of the SDGs into the Semester would
13. A specic Commission’s Communication on ‘A Strong Social Europe for Just Transitions’ (EC 2020c) adds more
details on the role of the Pillar in this context and on its implementation through the Semester. On the Just
Transition Mechanism and, more generally, on the notion of just transition, see Sabato and Fronteddu (2020).
124 Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
125Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into the European Semester
allow for a better understanding of this big picture, helping to both exploit synergies
and identify and address possible trade-os (ibid: 2).
While some information on how the Commission intends to use the SDGs in the
Semester emerges in the ASGS 2020, the Communication on the 2020 Country Reports
(CRs) is somewhat more explicit, explaining that
‘[in] line with the legal scope of the European Semester, the integration of SDGs
focuses on their macro-economic dimension and on how they can be achieved
through economic, employment and social policies.’ (European Commission
2020b: 3, bold in the original removed)
The Country Reports should represent key documents providing concrete analysis of
the four dimensions of competitive sustainability and identifying SDG-relevant policies
and challenges. In order to do so, the Country Reports 2020 include ‘environmental
sustainability’ among the key reform priorities for the Member States, alongside
‘public nance and taxation’, ‘nancial sector’, ‘labour market, education and social
policies’, and ‘competitiveness, reforms, and investments’. The resulting environmental
section of the Country Reports provides an analysis of countries’ environmental and
climate-related challenges, ‘with a focus on those areas that interlink with economic
and employment policies, including the social impact of these challenges and policies’
(European Commission 2020a: 3).14
Of course, the other dimensions of competitive sustainability are also incorporated in
the 2020 Country Reports. In particular, the ‘fairness’ dimension represents the social
aims of the renewed Semester, i.e. to prevent and combat the risk of growing social
divides, while ensuring the provision of social rights by delivering on the principles of
the European Pillar of Social Rights (European Commission 2019c: 9). Social issues
in the 2020 Country Reports are grouped into three categories – ‘labour market’,
‘education and training’ and ‘social protection’ – with country-specic analyses, as
was the case in previous years, based on the Social Scoreboard supporting the EPSR.
To strengthen the link between the EPSR and the SDGs, the box in the 2020 Country
Reports summarising countries’ performance with respect to the Social Scoreboard
indicators has been explicitly connected to the SDGs, clearly indicating the SDGs to
which each social indicator is linked. Thus, country performances measured through
the Social Scoreboard are deemed directly relevant to assess progress towards no less
than six ‘social’ SDGs: SDG 1 (end poverty in all its forms everywhere), SDG 3 (ensure
healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages), SDG 4 (ensure inclusive and
equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all), SDG 5
(achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls), SDG 8 (promote sustained,
inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent
work for all), and SDG 10 (reduce inequality within and among countries).
14. Each Country Report contains a specic Annex on ‘Investment guidance on the just transition fund 2021–2022’
(Annex D) that identies the regions eligible for funding under the Just Transition Fund and investment
priorities to make the economy greener, more modern and more competitive, while also tackling the socio-
economic consequences of the transition.
Besides adding a dedicated environmental section and linking the EPSR to specic
SDGs, the 2020 Country Reports also explicitly feature the SDGs in dierent ways.
References to each country’s performance in relation to the SDGs are contained in the
‘Executive Summary’, in a dedicated paragraph of the section on ‘Economic situation
and outlook’ and in a new Annex E on ‘Progress Towards the Sustainable Development
Goals’. The latter features comparative statistics and trends for the past ve years in a
country’s performance with respect to the indicators that Eurostat associates with each
SDG in its annual Monitoring Report (Eurostat 2020). Furthermore, the SDGs – or,
more precisely, how specic themes or initiatives addressed in the Country Reports
relate to the SDGs – have been mainstreamed throughout the Country Reports, even if
not systematically. In this respect, our analysis reveals that a certain degree of selectivity
in the usage of the SDGs in the Semester was indeed necessary for two reasons. First,
the emphasis attributed to specic SDGs varies according to the countries, considering
the dierent national situations and challenges. Second, not all the SDGs have been
considered with the same degree of detail, since some of them are particularly dicult
to fully include in a process such as the Semester, with its focus on Member States’
employment and economic policies. Cases in point are cooperation and development
issues and, more generally, the external dimension of sustainable development, meaning
both EU action to promote sustainable development worldwide and the impact that EU
policies have elsewhere in the world.
The changes described above raised the need for some analytical adjustments. To gain
more detailed information on the situation in the Member States in relation to the SDGs,
Eurostat was asked to include country chapters in its annual monitoring of the SDGs,
which they did in the 2020 edition of their monitoring report (Eurostat 2020). As for the
SDGs more directly linked to economic and social objectives, the Commission largely
continues to rely on the sources already used in previous Semester cycles, sometimes
linking them more explicitly to the SDGs, as in the case of the Social Scoreboard
supporting the EPSR. However, new indicators for analysing the macroeconomic and
social implications of the ecological transition are expected to be included in the next
Semester cycle.
From a procedural point of view, the ‘core DGs’ of the Semester and the distribution
of roles and responsibilities in drafting the Semester’s documents between the various
DGs involved remain unchanged. However, at the level of the country teams, the need
to address environmental sustainability in the Semester and to adopt a more integrated
approach — as suggested by the notion of competitive sustainability — has led to the
strengthening of inter-service coordination. Ultimately, the 2020 Semester has drawn
more on the internal expertise of a broader array of DGs such as, for instance, the
Directorate-General for Climate Action (DG CLIMA) and the Directorate-General for
the Environment (DG ENV). To steer this work, to make sure that the documents reect
the Commission’s priority objectives and to ensure consistency, the Secretariat-General
issued a horizontal guidance note at the beginning of the process.
The Commission also ‘invited Member States to take stock of progress made on the
SDGs in their national reform programmes, as a qualitative complement to the
126 Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
127Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into the European Semester
indicator-based monitoring by the Commission within the Semester that will capture
the economy-wide aspects of the related policies’ (European Commission 2020a: 14).
The comprehensive analysis in the Country Reports was expected to be translated into
the Country-specic Recommendations (CSRs) for 2020, providing Member States with
concrete guidance on the reforms and investments to prioritise in order to conjugate the
four dimensions of competitive sustainability. Soon after the publication of the 2020
Country Reports, however, EU countries were hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, with
enormous socio-economic consequences (see Myant, this volume; Vanhercke et al., this
volume). In this context, the Commission restated its willingness to maintain, in the
CSRs, the overall approach of the ASGS. Indeed, according to the European Commission
(2020b: 5, bold removed from original),
‘[t]he pandemic underlines the interconnectedness of economic, social and
environmental spheres and the need for a holistic strategy to recovery. For this
reason, the integration of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) in the European Semester of economic policy coordination is even more
important than it was before.’
The priorities in the 2020 CSRs for the Member States were thus to cushion the
immediate social, employment and economic eects of the crisis (with a particular
focus on health), while prioritising ‘green’ - and digital – investment as a basis for future
recovery. In doing so, Member States were allowed to temporarily disregard the scal
constraints deriving from the Stability and Growth Pact, only resuming more prudent
scal policies ‘when economic conditions [...] will allow’ (European Commission
2020b: 7; see also Myant, this volume). According to the Commission, by implementing
the 2020 CSRs, Member States will make further progress towards the SDGs and
competitive sustainability.
Conclusions: the EU and sustainable development – facing the
governance conundrum
In this chapter we have investigated the origins and rationale of the 2019 proposal by
the von der Leyen Commission to integrate the SDGs into the European Semester.
Through a preliminary analysis of the relevant documents of the 2020 Semester, we have
identied some of the implications of such integration. In doing so, we have adopted a
long-term perspective, analysing not only the most recent debates and initiatives but
also previous attempts to implement sustainable development at EU level. Our analysis
shows that full and coherent integration of the 2030 Agenda and of the SDGs into EU
policymaking is an extremely complex endeavour and, from a governance perspective,
a veritable conundrum. Though the von der Leyen Commission’s decision to use the
Semester for such a purpose might represent a partial solution to this conundrum, it
also has some important shortcomings.
Looking at the 2020 Semester, we conclude that the decision to integrate the SDGs has
contributed to broadening its analytical scope, adding some elements that, previously,
were only marginally included, such as, importantly, a focus on environmental
sustainability. The latter is one of the main components of the notion of competitive
sustainability promoted by the 2020 ASGS, a notion that mirrors, in many respects,
the three key dimensions of sustainable development. By relying on this notion, the
Commission has tried to bridge the gap between the two main strategic frameworks
guiding the 2020 Semester: the European Green Deal and the SDGs. The addition of
an environmental dimension to the Semester’s 2020 Country Reports has not detracted
attention from other, more traditional Semester topics in these documents, including
those pertaining to the social dimension. As for the latter, the analyses in the 2020
Semester are still organised around the principles and rights of the EPSR, while the
Pillar’s Scoreboard has been explicitly linked to the SDGs, conrming that, in the
intention of the Commission, the EPSR should be seen as a key element in implementing
the SDGs in the EU. The inclusion of an environmental dimension and the references
to the SDGs have to some extent laid the foundations for analyses (in the Semester’s
Country Reports) more in line with a sustainable development approach, i.e., based
not only on the identication of synergies, but also of possible trade-os between the
constitutive dimensions of competitive sustainability. Finally, these developments were
also accompanied by some changes in the Commission’s internal procedures for drafting
the Country Reports and CSRs, drawing more on the expertise of DGs previously less
involved in the Semester, such as DG ENV and DG CLIMA.
On the downside, the enlargement of the Semester’s scope has made its procedures
even more complex and time-consuming, as well as adding many new scoreboards
and indicators (with new ones yet to come). Furthermore, some limitations in using
the Semester as a means for achieving and monitoring all the 17 SDGs are apparent.
Indeed, the nature of the process and the need to keep it manageable impose a certain
selectivity in the usage of specic SDGs. In the Semester, the focus is on the macro-
economic implications of the SDGs and on how they can be achieved through economic,
employment and social policies. Consequently, fully-edged analyses of national
situations in relation to all the SDGs, and of their interlinkages, are not possible within
the Semester. Moreover, the Semester cannot be used to assess the EU’s contribution to
sustainable development outside its borders.
This said, in the logic of ‘mainstreaming’ followed by the Commission, the Semester is
not the only process expected to contribute to delivering on the SDGs. The latter are
supposed to serve as input to all the major EU initiatives. In this respect, the request
tabled by the Council to set up a dedicated, overarching strategy for implementing the
2030 Agenda could be a way to systemise the various initiatives and strategies relevant
for the SDGs, possibly ensuring their coherence. Whatever the case, designing a new
dedicated strategy is bound to have important shortcomings, as witnessed by the EU
SDS. Without strong governance arrangements, a new strategy for implementing the
2030 Agenda and achieving its SDGs is at risk either of remaining peripheral, given the
prominence of the EGD as the new overarching growth framework, or of duplicating
128 Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
129Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into the European Semester
most of the priorities identied in the EGD.15 Furthermore, a dedicated strategy for
implementing the 2030 Agenda based on the ‘better usage of existing mechanisms’
(in the words of the Council) risks being a vague solution that eventually reproduces
the problem of how to adapt procedures and instruments originally designed for other
purposes to the SDGs. All in all, the political priority currently assigned to drafting a
comprehensive implementation strategy for the 2030 Agenda is at present unclear.
Though the EU’s commitment to promote the 2030 Agenda is continuously restated,
it seems that the European Council went from requesting a dedicated implementation
strategy (European Council 2018) to not including such a request in the ‘New Strategic
Agenda 2019–2024’ (European Council n.d.: 6). For its part, while including ‘a
sustainable Europe’ among its priorities, the German Presidency of the Council (2020)
also remains vague, simply referring to the drafting of a ‘concept’ for implementing
the UN 2030 Agenda, accompanied by regular reports monitoring progress in the
achievement of the SDGs (German Presidency 2020: 16).
In sum, including the SDGs in EU policymaking seems to be a veritable governance
conundrum for the von der Leyen Commission. On the one hand, if not well-designed,
a new SDG-centred strategy runs the risk of being ineective. On the other hand,
relegating full implementation of the SDGs to the Semester is not feasible (given that the
Semester is rst and foremost a socio-economic governance instrument unable to fully
capture the holistic ambitions of the SDGs) or even undesirable (since overstretching
the Semester’s scope might turn it into an unmanageable tool).
At the same time, keeping the SDGs out of the Semester would also not seem to be a
good idea, since the latter provides (some of) these goals with an already available and
well-established governance framework. Indeed, their partial integration into the 2020
Semester is one of the EU’s most concrete attempts to put sustainable development at
the centre of its policymaking. While such an attempt may have been imperfect and in
many respects incomplete, at the time of the writing (September 2020) it is unclear
whether and to what extent it will be continued in the Semester 2021.
The 2021 Semester has indeed been recently modied to encompass the ‘Next
Generation EU plan’ and the related ‘Recovery and Resilience Facility’, while the
ASGS 2021 contains some important novelties entailing a deep transformation of both
the Semester’s procedures and its outputs (European Commission 2020d; see also
Vanhercke et al., this volume). According to the Commission, the ASGS 2021 is in full
continuity with the ASGS 2020, with the four dimensions of competitive sustainability
remaining the Semester’s ‘guiding principles’ (ibid: 2). This said, compared to the
ASGS 2020, the notion is framed in a dierent way. With a view to developing a more
optimistic narrative, the focus is now on the opportunities deriving from the synergies
between the four dimensions of competitive sustainability, leaving possible tensions
and trade-os at best implicit. As explained in this chapter, the latter represent key
15 As we have shown in Section 2, while embracing a comprehensive and multidimensional understanding of
sustainable development, the previous EU SDS was focussed on a more limited number of priority challenges.
The same applies to the proposal of the Juncker Commission (Section 3) that relied on a limited number of
policy foundations for a sustainable future, that have then been to a large extent included in the EGD.
elements of the notion of sustainable development, which the 2020 Semester managed
to somehow incorporate. More in general and dierent to the previous cycle, in the
ASGS 2021 the notion of competitive sustainability is not explicitly linked to the
implementation of the 2030 Agenda and of the SDGs, with the latter only briey and
generically mentioned in the document as a reference framework for the Recovery
and Resilience Facility (European Commission 2020d: 3). Similarly, the SDGs are not
mentioned in the guidance provided by the Commission to Member States for drafting
their Recovery and Resilience plans, i.e. the documents that will integrate the National
Reform Programmes in 2021 (European Commission 2020e, 2020f). This circumstance
casts doubts on the Commission’s willingness to use the SDGs when assessing these
plans. All in all, the initial resolution of the von der Leyen Commission to create a strong
and explicit link between the Semester, the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs seems to have
lost momentum, while the governance conundrum in the implementation of the UN
2030 Agenda and its SDGs at EU level is still in search of a solution.
References
Armstrong K. A. (2010) Governing social inclusion: Europeanization through policy coordination,
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Biermann F., Kanie N. and Kim R. E. (2017) Global governance by goal-setting: the novel approach
of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability,
Vol. 26-27, 26-31.
Charveriat C. and Bodin E. (2020) Delivering the Green Deal: the role of a reformed Semester within
a new sustainable growth strategy for the EU, Brussels, Institute for European Environmental
Policy (IEEP).
Council of the European Union (2019a) Towards an ever more sustainable Union by 2030, Council
conclusions, 8286/19, 9 April 2019.
Council of the European Union (2019b) Building a sustainable Europe by 2030 – progress thus far
and next steps, Council Conclusions, 14835/19, 10 December 2019.
Council of the European Union (2015) A new global partnership for poverty eradication and
sustainable development after 2015, Council Conclusions, 9241/15, YML/zs, 26 May 2015.
Council of the European Union (2014) A transformative post-2015 agenda, Council Conclusions,
16827/14, 16 December 2014.
Council of the European Union (2013) The overarching post 2015 agenda, Council Conclusions,
11559/13, YML/ik, 25 June 2013.
Council of the European Union (2009) 2009 Review of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy –
presidency report, 16818/09, IH/pc, 1 December 2009.
Council of the European Union (2006) Review of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU
SDS) – Renewed Strategy, Annex, 10917/06, WP/pc, 26 June 2006.
Domorenok E. (2019) Governing sustainability in the EU: from political discourse to policy practice,
London, Routledge.
European Commission (2020a) 2020 European Semester: assessment of progress on structural
reforms, prevention and correction of macroeconomic imbalances, and results of in-depth
reviews under Regulation (EU), 1176/2011, Communication from the Commission,
COM(2020) 150 final, 26 February 2020.
130 Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
131Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into the European Semester
European Commission (2020b) 2020 European Semester: Country-specific recommendations,
Communication from the Commission, COM(2020) 500 final, 20 May 2020.
European Commission (2020c) A strong social Europe for just transitions, Communication from
the Commission, COM(2020) 14 final, 14 January 2020.
European Commission (2020d) Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy 2021, Communication from
the Commission, COM(2020) 575 final, 17 September 2020.
European Commission (2020e) Guidance to Member States recovery and resilience plans, Part 1/2,
Commission Staff Working Document, SWD(2020) 205 final, 17 September 2020.
European Commission (2020f) Guidance to Member States recovery and resilience plans, Part 2/2,
Commission Staff Working Document, SWD(2020) 205 final, 17 September 2020.
European Commission (2019a) Towards a sustainable Europe by 2030, Reflection Paper, 30
January 2019.
European Commission (2019b) The European Green Deal, Communication from the Commission,
COM(2019) 640 final, 11 December 2019.
European Commission (2019c) Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy 2020, Communication from
the Commission, COM(2019) 650 final, 17 December 2019.
European Commission (2016a) Next steps for a sustainable European future: European action for
sustainability, Communication from the Commission, COM(2016) 0739 final, 22 November
2016.
European Commission (2016b) Key European action supporting the 2030 Agenda and the
Sustainable Development Goals, Commission Staff Working Document, SWD (2016) 390 final,
22 November 2016.
European Commission (2015) A global partnership for poverty eradication and sustainable
development after 2015, Communication from the Commission, 5 February 2015.
European Commission (2014) A decent life for all: from vision to collective action, Communication
from the Commission, COM/2014/0335 final, 2 June 2014.
European Commission (2013) A decent life for all: ending poverty and giving the world a
sustainable future, Commission Communication, COM(2013) 92 final, 27 February 2013.
European Commission (2010) Europe 2020: strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth,
Communication from the Commission, COM(2010) 2020 final, 3 March 2010.
European Commission (2009) Mainstreaming sustainable development into EU policies: 2009
review of the European Union Strategy for Sustainable Development, Communication from the
Commission, COM(2009) 400 final, 24 July 2009.
European Commission (2005) On the review of the Sustainable Development Strategy: a platform
for action, Communication from the Commission, COM(2005) 658 final, 13 December 2005.
European Commission (2001) A sustainable Europe for a better world: a European Union strategy
for sustainable development, Commission’s proposal to the Gothenburg European Council,
Communication from the Commission, COM(2001) 264 final, 15 May 2001.
European Council (n.d.) A new strategic Agenda 2019–2024, European Council.
European Council (2018) Conclusions, EUCO 13/18, 18 October 2018.
European Council (2001) Presidency conclusions, Göteborg European Council, 15 and 16 June
2001.
Eurostat (2020) Sustainable development in the European Union: monitoring report on progress
towards the SDGS in an EU Context, Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union.
Eurostat (2015) Sustainable development in the European Union: 2015 monitoring report of the
EU Sustainable Development Strategy, Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union.
Fukuda-Parr S. (2016) From the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development
Goals: shifts in purpose, concept, and politics of global goal setting for development, Gender &
Development, 24 (1), 43-52.
German Presidency (2020) Together for Europe’s recovery, Programme for Germany’s Presidency of
the Council of the European Union, 1 July to 31 December 2020.
Mensah J. (2019) Sustainable development: meaning, history, principles, pillars, and implications
for human action, literature review, Cogent Social Sciences, 5 (1), s.p.
Monaco E. (2018) Sustainable development governance from margins to mainstream: overcoming
traps by embracing complexity, European Journal of Sustainable Development, 07 (1), 25-32.
O’Connor M. (2007) The ‘Four Spheres’ framework for sustainability, Ecological Complex, 3 (4),
285-292.
Pradhan P., Costa L., Rybski D., Lucht W. and Kropp J. P. (2017) A systematic study of Sustainable
Development Goal (SDG) interactions, Earth’s Future, 5 (11), 1169-1179.
Sabato S. and Fronteddu B. (2020) A socially just transition through the European Green Deal?
Working Paper, Brussels, European Trade Union Institute (ETUI).
Sabato S. and Mandelli M. (2018) The EU’s potential for promoting an eco-social agenda,
Norwegian Social Research and European Social Observatory, Oslo, Brussels.
Schweikert A., Espinet X. and Chinowsky P. (2018) The triple bottom line: bringing a sustainability
framework to prioritize climate change investments for infrastructure planning, Sustainability
Science, 13 (2), 377-391.
United Nations (2015) Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development,
New York, United Nations.
United Nations (2000) United Nations millennium declaration, Report of the United Nations
Millennium Summit, New York, United Nations.
United Nations (1987) Our common future, Report of the World Commission on Environment and
Development, New York, United Nations.
von der Leyen U. (2019a) A Union that strives for more: my agenda for Europe, Political Guidelines
for the Next European Commission 2019-2024 by candidate for President of the European
Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
von der Leyen U. (2019b) Opening statement in the European Parliament plenary session,
Strasbourg, European Parliament.
von der Leyen U. (2019c) Mission letter to Paolo Gentiloni – Commissioner for Economy, Brussels,
1 December 2019.
Zeitlin J. and Vanhercke B. (2018) Socializing the European Semester: EU social and economic
policy co-ordination in crisis and beyond, Journal of European Public Policy, 25 (2), 149-174.
132 Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2020
Sebastiano Sabato and Matteo Mandelli
