Monitoring sustainable development and decoupling in the EU

Abstract

The EU formulated a long-term sustainable development strategy in 2001 and renewed it in 2006. The progress of the EU against the challenges laid out in this strategy has been monitored by EU Sustainable Development Indica-tors. The aim of this paper is to examine how the EU has approached the sustainable development path using se-lected Sustainable Development Indicators. In this paper, attention is especially paid to resource productivity, material consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the EU economies and particularly in their transport sec-tors. The development of these indicators has varied across the EU countries. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the overall economies has shown favourable trends, in contrast to their development in the transport sectors. Stable or decreasing domestic material consumption (DMC) in the EU has often been associated with relatively low GDP growth rates and conversely high GDP growth rates with moderate or high increases in DMC. Therefore, the significant changes in trends due to the economic crisis are not the result of structural changes but rather a temporary interruption of longer-term trends. The EU has still not begun to fully follow the sustainable development path.