The Europe 2030 Strategy

Abstract

In 2021, the European Union launched the Europe 2030 Strategy. Its goal is to drive progress in three areas: social resilience, green transition, and digital transformation. Each pillar comes with ambitious EU-wide and national targets. Progress, however, is uneven. Member States face different structural conditions and unequal policy capacity. Descriptive statistics alone are not enough to capture these differences. This thesis builds composite indexes for the three pillars of Europe 2030. It also applies the decomposition method of Walheer (2018) to separate three effects: country-specific factors, EU-wide developments, and the ambition of the targets. This helps to see whether differences are due to national reforms, common shocks such as the COVID-19 crisis, or objectives that are difficult to reach. The results show steady improvement in the Social and Green pillars, with progress in employment, poverty reduction, renewable energy, and emissions. The Digital pillar, by contrast, lags behind. This is explained by both slow adoption of new technologies and gaps in statistical coverage. The decomposition shows where reforms must be made at the national level, where EU coordination is most effective, and where targets may need to be reconsidered. The research is guided by the following question: "How can comprehensive indexes be constructed to measure the achievements of European countries towards the Europe 2030 Strategy goals of sustainable development, inclusivity, and environmental protection?"