September 1, 2023 - August 31, 2027

This PhD project explores how sustainability has become a central political concept in the European Union since the 1970s. While sustainability is commonly understood as related to environmental issues, this project approaches sustainability as a “contested concept” through which political actors perform broader interests, ideas, and visions for future society. As such the project investigates, what the ‘sustainable future’ looks like to those who shape it. To elucidate the contestation and normative horizon of this key concept, the project investigates the EU, the self-proclaimed ‘global frontrunner of sustainability’.

To pursue its objectives, the project employs a mixed-method approach to analysing textual material collected through EU archives, interviews, and on-site methods. The research strategy reflects the project’s multidimensional scope. On the one hand, the project investigates the uses of sustainability at different levels of EU policy-making, from overarching political strategies and speeches to legislation and actions within specific policy areas. On the other hand, the project examines how the concept has evolved over time, from the 1970s until 2020s.

By seeking empirical evidence from policy-making, the project contributes to research that historicise and theorise key contemporary concepts, including seemingly environmental concepts, as political issues. The hope is that by tracing the concept of sustainability as it traverses EU policy-making it is possible to get indications of what we may expect from the EU’s current trajectory towards a ‘sustainable Europe’ and how this relates to contemporary challenges of environmental (e.g. climate change, biodiversity loss), socio-economic (e.g. rising material inequalities, issues of mental health) and political (decreasing trust in political institutions, rise of populism) character.