Introduction: The new EU leadership (2024-2029) and the SDGs

In a context where the new EU leadership – European Commission, Parliament and Council of the EU—has recently been established for the period 2024-2029, this sixth edition of the European Sustainable Development Report (ESDR) presents an updated narrative report and database to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 2030 Agenda in Europe. Since 2019, the ESDR has presented the SDG Index and Dashboards for Europe and provided an annual overview of the EU’s progress towards the SDGs. It builds on the methodology of the global SDG Index which has been statistically audited in 2019 by the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC). This year’s edition covers 41 individual European countries: 27 EU member states, 9 Candidate countries, 4 countries in the European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA) and the United Kingdom. The report and SDG Index database highlight areas of success as well as opportunities for further improvement and use the data to compare the progress of European sub-regions. The data and findings build on several rounds of consultations conducted since 2019 with scientists, experts and practitioners from across Europe, made possible in large part through the long-standing cooperation between the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC).

The new leadership of the EU has reaffirmed its commitment to implementing the SDGs and 2030 Agenda on several occasions in the second half of 2024. Although the SDGs were not mentioned explicitly in the Political Guidelines of the current President of the European Commission (European Commission, 2024c), the mission letters shared with all the Commissioners in September 2024 (European Commission, 2024a) specify that “As we head to 2030, each Member of the college will ensure the delivery of the EU targets and objectives defined for that year, as well as of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals within their policy areas. The college as a whole will be responsible for the implementation of the Goals.”

The previous European Parliament has issued several SDG resolutions (European European Parliament, 2019) and established an informal SDG alliance. The European Council Strategic Agenda 2024-2029 further emphasizes:

“The European Union shall continue to be the strongest supporter of the international legal order, steadfastly upholding the United Nations and the principles enshrined in the UN Charter. In particular, the European Union will pursue efforts to promote global peace, justice and stability, as well as democracy, universal human rights and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in all international fora. We will strive for a reformed multilateral system, making it more inclusive and more effective.”

The SDSN has argued for many years that the SDGs are largely an investment agenda notably into human capital (education, health, social protection, others) and physical infrastructure (renewable energy and grids, access to technology, others) (Sachs et al., 2019). The Draghi report (European Commission, 2024b) presented in September 2024 also emphasizes that the long-term prosperity and competitiveness of Europe must build on an ambitious investment plan and calls for additional annual investment of €800 billion EUR notably to advance the green and digital transformations. At the same time, budget pressures and political divides are mounting, and such a massive scale-up in investments can only be achieved via collective action and collaboration across EU member states. At the global level, an EU member state–Spain–will host in June 2024 the 4^th International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). This conference represents an important milestone to advance the reform of the Global Financial Architecture (GFA) and to unlock further private and public capital to support the achievements of the SDGs.

Overall, and as argued in last year’s ESDR2023/24 (Lafortune et al., 2024), peace and global cooperation are the fundamental conditions to achieve sustainable development, in Europe and globally. In a multipolar world, characterized by rising geopolitical tensions across superpowers, the EU and its member states should leverage all diplomatic channels and build coalitions with countries and alliances that aim to promote peace and sustainable development. Previous editions of these reports have introduced the concept of SDG/Green Deal Diplomacy (SDSN & IEEP, 2020). The UN Charter (1945) but also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the SDGs remain crucial instruments that can help promote a global dialogue between the EU and the rest of the multipolar world.

As such, the 10 recommendations made in last years’ ESDR2023/24 to “Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in a Fragmented and Multipolar World” endorsed by 200+ scientists, experts and practitioners from all over Europe remain particularly relevant (Lafortune et al., 2024) (see Box 1.1). The new EU leadership is the last one before reaching the 2030 landmark year. The next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), for 2028–2035, must integrate, maintain, and even increase the total level of financing to sufficiently fund the required transformation deep into the next decade.