European Commission | Mapping EU Policies with the 2030 Agenda and SDGs

ABSTRACT - The UN 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are increasingly gaining momentum as a vehicle to foster a sustainable development transition. The EC is a frontrunner in this transition process and its political priorities are strongly linked with the SDGs. This report contributes to the mainstreaming of the SDGs by analysing how the policy initiatives of the current Commission are semantically linked to the 2030 Agenda and to SDGs. The identified goals and targets well reflect the transversal political priorities and the policy response to the various challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic (SDG 3 on health and SDG 8 on sustainable economic growth). The mapping highlighted most relevant policies for specific SDGs, as well as SDGs that are more universally addressed across policy initiatives. The analysis also revealed potential gaps where policies did not seem to adequately address certain aspects of the 2030 Agenda (e.g. SDG 5 on gender equality). EU policy making processes show a tendency towards more integrated policy perspectives, as political priorities and their underlying initiatives address SDGs in a more systemic manner. In contrast to more technologically advanced Artificial Intelligence-based approaches, the methodology utilised in this report does not remain a black box but provides transparent and robust results on the semantic links between the SDGs and EU policy documents that can be easily communicated to inform future policy making processes.

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