What do we do?
The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17 SDGs and 169 targets, has given new impetus to global efforts to achieve sustainable development. The EU has played an important role in shaping the 2030 Agenda, through public consultations, dialogue with partners and in-depth research. The EU is committed to playing an active role to maximise progress towards the sustainable development goals, as outlined, for example, in the communication ‘Next steps for a sustainable European future’, in the Commission staff working document ‘Delivering on the UN’s sustainable development goals – A comprehensive approach’, and more recently in the first ever EU Voluntary Review on progress in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted on 15 May 2023.
This lasting commitment to the United Nations’ sustainable development goals constitutes an overriding political priority for the von der Leyen Commission. Progressing towards the sustainable development goals is an intrinsic part of the President’s political programme, and an array of deeply transformative policies had already been presented in 2020, such as the European Green Deal, the Climate Law, a new industrial strategy for Europe, the 2020 and 2021 annual sustainable growth strategy and the new European skills agenda, among others.
This commitment assumes even greater relevance in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has provided an impetus to ‘build back better’ towards a more inclusive, sustainable, just and resilient future for all, leaving no one behind. Notably, the Commission’s 2021 annual sustainable growth strategy reaffirmed that sustainability, productivity, fairness and stability, which are the four pillars on which the EU’s economic policy must rely to implement reforms and investments in the EU (as mentioned in the 2020 annual sustainable growth strategy), should remain the guiding principles underpinning Member States’ recovery and resilience plans under the Recovery and Resilience Facility.
These priorities lie at the heart of the European semester and ensure that the new growth agenda efficiently mobilises resources for the benefit of people and the planet. To this end, a holistic and balanced approach is required in which the EU works better together with the Member States and across policy fields. Given the division of competences between the Member States and the EU, close coordination is crucial to achieving the SDGs.
Looking ahead to the coming multiannual financial framework, in its 2021 communication on better regulation the Commission adopted a number of further policymaking improvements to ensure that our policies support the recovery and resilience of the EU and its twin green and digital transitions in the best possible way. In this context, the Commission decided to mainstream the SDGs with a view to helping ensure that every legislative proposal contributes to the 2030 sustainable development agenda.
To this end, the Commission will identify relevant SDGs for each proposal and examine how the initiative will support their achievement. What is more, links to the SDGs will be included throughout evaluations and impact assessments.
At the EU level, sustainable development challenges are addressed through policies and regulatory instruments. As far as the former are concerned, the EU budget, through its spending programmes, provides a significant contribution to sustainable development by complementing national budgets, in line with the principle of subsidiarity. In doing so, the design and implementation of the EU spending programmes aim to deliver on the objectives in each policy field while promoting sustainability through the initiatives and interventions of the relevant programmes, in a connected and consisted way. In particular, 44 out of 48 of the EU spending programmes contributed towards at least one sustainable development goals in 2022.
The number of programmes contributing to individual sustainable development goals is presented in the graph below:
In light of the cross-cutting nature of the sustainable development goals, and in order to ensure a holistic approach in addressing sustainable development, over 99%(1) of the budget of EU spending programmes contribute to sustainable development goals. What is more, in their vast majority (35 programmes) they are designed to address multiple sustainable development goals through their policy actions. The Commission presents the sustainable development goals to which each EU programme contributes, along with examples of their contribution. This is with a view to further enhancing the reporting on the performance of its programmes and providing a deeper understanding of EU policy coherence. Infographic illustrates, in a non-exhaustive manner, the many examples of the contribution of EU programmes to the SDGs.
The European Solidarity Fund+ and the ReactEU-Fund funded the ‘Solidarity’ project in Bulgaria, which helps over 9 000 Ukranian refugees to find a job through the National Employment Agency and to receive psychological support, personalised career guidance and rent support.
In the context of the EU Aid Programme for the Turkish Cypriot Community, EUR 19.2 million are committed to animal disease eradication, vertinary services, and farm advisory services, thus supporting food safety and public health.
The Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, supported with a total of EUR 4 billion until 2030 under the EU4Health Programme, sets out a new EU approach to cancer prevention, treatment and care tackling the entire disease pathway, from prevention to quality of life of cancer patients and survivors, focusing on actions where the EU can add the most value.
The Eduaction Accesss and Quality Improvement Program in Somalia, funded with EUR 25 million by the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument, aims at improving the governance, quality, relevance and inclusiveness of education and training sector through the building of 50 new schools with 200 new classrooms.
In Austria, the ‘100 Percent’ project running from 2020 to 2023 and funded with EUR 2.4 million by the European Social Fund, gives free consultancy to companies to recognise and improve opportunities for women at work.
The InvestEU operations contribute to the sustainable management of water resources by helping projects in the fields of water supply and wastewater treatment. As of 31 December 2022, implementing partners signed around EUR 40 million of operations supporting water resources.
The Connecting Europe Facility supports with EUR 40 million the smart electricity grid project SINCRO. GRID, which facilitates the development and the safe and efficient integration of new renewable electricity generation in Slovenia and Croatia into the grid. The project also improves the security of supply in Slovenia and Croatia, as well as the neighbouring countries Hungary, Austria and Italy, by targeting potential difficulties caused by the variability of intermittent renewable energy.
From 2020 to 2024, the Instrument for Preaccesion Assistance supports the programme ‘Social Inclusion’ in Albania, and topped up its contribution with EUR 20.65 million to finance COVID-19 emergency support measures. 173 091 employees benefited from measures related to support to businesses affected by COVID-19 and 65 574 individuals received the minimum salary for a period of 3 months as a targeted measure to small enterprises temporary closed as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.
The European Capital of Innovation Awards (iCapital), funded by the Horizon Europe Programme, has been established to reward those European cities that are courageous enough to open their governance practices to experimentation, to boost innovation, to be a role model for other cities, and to push the boundaries of technology for the benefit of their citizens. In addition to the monetary reward, the prize brings high visibility in the form of renewed public interest and increased media coverage. In 2022, the winner was Aix-Marseille Provence Metropole.
With funding from the Pre-Acession Instrument, the EU promoted the rights of the childs in the enlargement region. With a support of EUR 5 million, a project was carried out to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the lives of children and families, focusing in particular on health and nutrition services, child protection services, education and early childhood development services. More than 290 000 children were supported by equitable and inclusive digital learning.
The LIFECOOLCITY project, awarded in 2022 under the LIFE programme, aims to increase the adaptive capacity to extreme weather events of at least 10 000 EU cities in 23 EU Member States from 2023 to 2029. The project is supported with EUR 3 million by the Commission.
Under LIFE’s Jalon project, citizen-led energy community projects throughout Europe are supported with EUR 1.7 million until 2026. The project specifically focusses on rural regions where the lack of specific legislation adapted to their reality and specific needs could cause them to be left behind in the energy transition.
In 2022, the transport strand of the Connercting Europe Facility supported, with funds awarded under the 2014-2020 framework, the completion of more than 70 electric charging supply points along the TEN-Trans- European transport network (TEN-T) of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia.
The Regional Fisheries Management Organisations promotes the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources, for example by improving management measures adopted following scientific advice and by promoting healthy tuna stocks in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. With the programme, in 2022, 17 out of 20 tuna and tuna-like stocks were fished at a sustainable level.
The Czechia-Poland cooperation programme, under the European Regional Development Fund, has supported flood mitigation and preparedness measures to strengthen crossborder readiness in crisis situations, especially in case of floods.
The European e-Justice Portal, established with funding from the Justice programme, facilitates access to justice throughout the EU and served 5.7 million visitors in 2022 via the citizens' engagement and participation strand and the EU values strand, of the Citizens, Equality and Values Programme. Funds support entities which contribute to make our common values, rights and equality and rich diversity alive and vibrant.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is a research facility on fusion as a future source of sustainable energy with the participation of seven international partners (Euratom, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United States) representing more than half of the world’s population. Euratom provides 45.45% of all components and cash contributions to ITER through the European Joint Undertaking for ITER and the Development of Fusion Energy.
The recently adopted EU Voluntary Review on SDGs reaffirms that the EU budget is an effective instrument to deliver major progress on the 2030 Agenda and, looking ahead, states that the EU will take further the commitment to inform on the implementation of the SDGs in all relevant Union programmes.
Aggregate result indicators for the priority ‘budget that works for people’ (jobs)
One of top priorities of the EU and the EU budget is enhancing the employability that is based on skill development and capacity building as well as supporting the creation of new jobs. However, the EU budget lacks measuring the aggregate impact on labour market, that is jobs being created or maintained and investment in human capital. Therefore, among the pilot projects the Commission has initiated to collect available information, there are the aggregate indicators for the two dimensions in the field of jobs.
In the process, the Commission reviewed the available data already collected at the level of programmes and identified relevant indicators and data. By doing so, it linked progress and achievements of programmes with their general objectives and to wider EU policy goals, which will help tracing and demonstrating the contribution of the EU budget to the achievement of EU policy goals – which in this case is investment in human capital and new jobs’ creation as a part of implementing SDG Development Goal 8.
The Commission proposes two aggregate indicators to be considered: one to measure the effect on the supply side (investment in human capital) and one to measure the effect on the demand side (increase or support the quantity of jobs). In the process, 34 relevant indicators were identified on the supply side and 10 on the demand side.
The work has been executed in the following steps:
- A mapping exercise identified all programmes that were contributing to either of the two aggregate labour market indicators based on objectives’ assessment;
- The list of indicators selected from the already assembled list (806 indicators in total) to measure the performance of the interventions (with explicit distinction of whether it refers to demand or supply side) has been prepared;
- A methodology to translate these indicators to a single data aggregator was designed (if needed);
- Gaps in programme indicators have been detected with a proposal on how to address these shortcomings in the coming years.
Gaps were identified only in programmes where objectives are set in such a way that contribute to either jobs’ creation or human capital in the short, medium or long term but there are no indicators measuring that. Moreover, few programmes with clear transmission mechanisms affecting mostly long-term labour market outcomes were also identified.
The paper that came out of the exercise was peer reviewed by an external expert, who also made several recommendations to take into account when designing the future performance framework of programmes, in particularly to better capture the mid- and long-term effects of programmes.
(1) This estimation takes into account the budget of the spending programmes, excluding other sources or budgets managed by the EU budget.