Security and Competitiveness at the Expense of Social Equality and Environmental Protection? : A Critical Analysis of Sustainability Discourses in the EU Strategic Agendas Between 2014–2024

The current crises of climate change, increasing inequalities and democratic backsliding must be acted upon urgently to secure a liveable planet and a fair and just future for everyone. In the European context, to understand the future direction to address these interconnected crises of social, economic and environmental sustainability, it is important to analyse how they are framed and prioritised by the most important political actor in Europe—the EU. The main strategic priorities of the EU are summarised in the EU Strategic Agenda, which is published after every EU election.The latest agenda was published in 2024 and has not yet been sufficiently examined or compared with its predecessors. Therefore, this thesis aims to examine how the sustainability discourses in the agendas have developed over time. It is a critical discourse analysis of the assumptions and discourses that underpin the agendas of 2014–2019, 2019–2024 and 2024–2029. Being informed by the sustainability trilemma and postcolonial intersectionality as a theoretical and interpretive framework, the analysis is guided by the following research question: How have sustainability discourses in the EU Strategic Agenda developed between 2014–2024? The findings suggest that sustainability discourses in all three agendas are underpinned by neoliberalism, Eurocentrism, anthropocentrism and geopolitical realism, which point to an overarching logic of competition, separation and social, economic and environmental hierarchies. This may have influenced the development of the sustainability discourses, which appear to have made a turn towards security and competitiveness at the expense of social equality and environmental protection.