Global Issues & External Action

IEEP launched a new programme entitled Global Issues and External Action in October 2011 to stimulate wider analysis and debate on the external dimension of EU policies relating to the environment and sustainable development. The programme brings together IEEP’s work on this external dimension and is designed to develop it in the future, informing key international events in the process. The run-up to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 is one example.

Sustainable development features prominently in the Lisbon Treaty as an objective to be pursued by the EU both internally and externally. Not only shall the EU ‘work for the sustainable development of Europe’ but it shall also contribute to ‘the sustainable development of the Earth’. According to the Treaty, one of the aims of such is to ‘help develop international measures to preserve and improve the quality of the environment and the sustainable management of global natural resources, in order to ensure sustainable development’. The EU’s self-proclaimed global leadership in environmental policy and sustainable development has become an important element of its identity and the political legitimation of several policies.

According to the EU’s Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) the EU seeks to ‘actively promote sustainable development worldwide and ensure that the European Union’s internal and external policies are consistent with global sustainable development and its international commitments’. What the objective of ensuring the consistency of all EU policies with global sustainable development actually entails is not clear. Yet it is obvious that many policy measures highlighted in areas of the strategy such as energy and climate change, the management of natural resources and sustainable production and consumption, though treated as internal policies, also have significant external implications.

IEEP research so far indicates that the EU still has a very long way to go to achieve the objective set out in the SDS to ensure that its internal and external policies are consistent with global sustainable development. The task is enormous, if only due to the diversity and scope of EU policies and the size of the EU’s ecological footprint. But the mandate of Lisbon will ensure that it remains on the political agenda of all EU institutions.