Time-frame: 2012-2013
Project Manager: Karolina Zurek

In recent years, sustainability has surpassed its initial restriction to green or nature-related policies, and has become a catch phrase applicable to almost all policy areas. Similarly, to the variety of contexts where it is applied, there also seems to be a rather varied understanding of the meaning of sustainability and what it stands for. Somewhere between durability and the long-term perspective on the one side, and self-sufficiency and resistance on the other, sustainability in the European political discourse has a number of different faces.

The aim of this project is to unravel the concept of sustainability as used in EU policy making, and to trace its modes of application both in the areas with which sustainability has traditionally been associated, as well as in the more modern and less intuitive contexts.

In its theoretical part, the project will provide an analysis of the development of the concept of sustainability in the European political discourse, and the evolution of its meaning and application in strategic EU documents, policy papers and legal sources.

In the empirical part, the project will gather contributions analysing sustainability as a trigger for action in a wide range of policy areas, both the traditional ones and the ‘newly emerged’ ones. This can include not only the areas such as environment and climate, energy, regional policy, agriculture and land use, and food policy, but also research and development, education, transport, immigration policy, social policy, employment policy, financial markets, and so forth.