EU monitoring of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) shows increasing economic prosperity, which has brought about improvements in the areas of employment, poverty, living conditions and health. However, these improvements have been accompanied by an increasing exploitation of natural resources, such as raw materials, energy and land. The EU might therefore miss its climate and energy targets for 2020, according to the most recent SDG monitoring report from Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU. The report analyses how the EU has progressed towards the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) over the past 5 to 15 years, on the basis of official European statistics.

The WU Institute for Managing Sustainability has been analysing the sustainable development of the EU on behalf of Eurostat since 2007. Markus Hametner, Mariia Kostetckaia and Ingrid Setz coordinated the overall preparation of the 2019 monitoring report and were in particular responsible for drafting the analyses on the topics economic growth and employment (SDG 8), inequalities (SDG 10), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11), sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12), and peace and justice (SDG 16).

The report is available for download from the Eurostat website: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/product?code=KS-02-19-165