A Sustainable Development Strategy should restore the confidence of the citizens in trusting EU leaders to create the conditions for long-term prosperity, social fairness, and a clean and healthy environment. This is also of crucial importance for new member states, who should be able to structure their economies towards sustainable development, avoiding some developments that are not sustainable and maintaining a lead in other areas.

The 1997 Amsterdam Treaty included sustainable development in the objectives of the European Union. The European Council in Helsinki, in December 1999, asked for a Sustainable Development Strategy. The Commission made its proposal in May 2001. The next month, the European Council, in Göteborg, failed to endorse its most fundamental elements. It did, however, decide that the so-called "Lisbon process", which only included economic and social policies, should be complemented by environmental objectives and indicators, transforming it into a Sustainable Development Strategy.

As a result, from 2002 onwards, the Spring European Summits will discuss progress on sustainable development. The first of such meetings, the one in Barcelona, was a deception. It paid lip service only to sustainable development.

The Spring Summit in 2003 gave a bit more hope for the future. It paid much more attention to environmental issues than the previous one. It clearly presented environmental policies as an important factor for innovation and job creation. It gave a new impulse to the Cardiff process and asked it to be connected to "overall and sector-specific decoupling objectives". The European Council expects the Commission and the General Affairs Council to give a clear overview on goals, targets and responsibilities in a yearly update of the 'Road map on the follow up to the Göteborg conclusions'. And it gave some concrete tasks to other Councils, like the Ecofin Council, which was urged to 'encourage the reform of subsidies that have considerable negative effects on the environment and that are incompatible with sustainable development'. This gives us a renewed basis to push for the abolition of 'perverse subsidies'. The Council also set deadlines for a number of existing legislative processes that would contribute to sustainable development. In 2004 however it appears that several of these tasks were not taken up and the Spring Summit failed to review these demands

Aims

• Ensure that the Spring Summits make progress in the further design of the EU SDS, by, inter alia, combining the right headline indicators with ambitious targets and timetables, take concrete steps to integrate environmental concerns in subsidy-policies, taxation, public procurement, and reform the EU economic and trade policies so that they concur with the environmental objectives of the EU.

• In particular, encourage the 2004 Summit to take concrete steps towards major investments in, in particular, public urban transport and social housing, as concrete contributions to sustainable development.

• Ensure that the Spring Summits are followed up with serious work in all Councils and the Commission, leading to measurable progress for report to successive Spring Summits.

• Promote an active role of the EU in the implementation of the conclusions of the Johannesburg Earth Summit, in particular with regards to the 10 year framework of programmes on consumption and production programmes. The EEB in particular sees a role for the EU in its own region as well as for the UNECE region.

• Maintain and further promote the involvement of non-environmental organisations in the pressure for sustainable development policies that give environment the necessary priorities while fulfilling in particular also the social objectives of the EU society using the right economic incentives.

• Start an early discussion about the improvements necessary for the 2005 Spring Summit to (further) strengthen EU's Strategy.

Activities

• Have two meetings with the EEB Board and other interested EEB members to discuss EEB strategy in this field of work.

• Promote and co-ordinate active EEB members' involvement in the campaign "Investing in Sustainable Development". Distribute relevant information.

• Follow closely the activities of the Presidencies, Councils and the Commission. Work together with, in particular, the ETUC and the Social Platform on a common response to the Commission's synthesis report for the 2004 Spring Summit.

• Organise a conference, together with ETUC and Social Platform, in January 2004, in Dublin, to inspire the Irish Presidency and other governments to take up the challenge of major sustainable development investment schemes in, in particular, public urban transport and social housing.

• Organise an active EEB involvement in the review of the Commission's Sustainable Development Strategy as well as in the formulation of the Strategy adopted by the new Commission.

• Prepare and distribute EEB positions for the Commission preparation for the 2005 Spring Report (Autumn 2004) and for the Spring Summit. Continue the discussion with the EU Institutions on headline indicators.

• Regularly report on this process in Metamorphosis.