Off the wire
• China to increase safety checks in schools  • West ceasing to oust Assad to help fighting IS: Russian FM  • Militia leader surrenders to UN Mission in DR Congo  • China to set up 60-bln-yuan fund to support SMEs  • ICRC calls for more humanitarian aid support from China  • 1st LD: China, Sudan to establish strategic partnership: Xi  • China Exclusive: China's fighting duchesses of World War II  • Interview: My father is my hero, says son of Japanese anti-war veteran  • Roundup: Tokyo stocks tumble on China data, domestic capital spending weighs  • Roundup: Afghan air strikes kill 27 militants in south, Taliban overrun base in north  
You are here: 　 Home

Eurostat's new report evaluates progress of EU's sustainable development strategy

Xinhua, September 1, 2015 Adjust font size:

Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union (EU), published its sixth monitoring report of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) on Tuesday, which evaluated progress towards the EU's SDS objectives using a set of more than 100 sustainable development indicators, grouped into ten thematic areas.

Resource productivity, the headline indicator of the "sustainable consumption and production" theme, has improved substantially since 2002 thanks to an overall reduction in domestic material consumption and an increase in GDP, said the report.

The employment rate of older workers, the headline indicator of the "demographic changes" theme, has increased continuously since 2002, and in 2013 the EU finally met its 50 percent employment target for older workers, which was originally set for 2010.

A clearly favorable development has also been observed for greenhouse gas emissions (GHG emissions), one of the headline indicators of the "climate change and energy" theme. GHG emissions have steadily decreased in the long run.

Within the economic dimension of sustainable development, the headline indicator of real GDP per capita, depicts an overall favorable picture for the EU. The indicator increased by more than 13 percent between 2000 and 2014.

Life expectancy has increased moderately in the long run, reflecting some positive developments in the "public health" area.

The headline indicator of the "social inclusion" theme has developed in a moderately unfavorable way over the long-term period with almost one in four people in the EU still at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2013.

Primary energy consumption, the second headline indicator of the "climate change and energy" theme, developed unfavorably until 2006. Since then, however, the trend has reversed and a continuous reduction can be observed. This reversal of the trend is reflected in the divergent short and long-term evaluations.

Similar conclusions can be drawn from the trends of energy consumption of transport relative to GDP, the headline indicator of the "sustainable transport" theme. It shows a moderately unfavorable long-term trend but a clearly favorable short-term trend.

The population status of common birds, the headline indicator of the "natural resources" theme, has deteriorated in the long term. Short-term developments were even more aggravated as a result of the substantial decline in the abundance of farmland birds.

Finally, regarding commitments in the area of "global partnership", the increase of the share of gross national income (GNI) spent by the EU on official development assistance (ODA) has been too slow to place the EU on track to meet its long-standing target of dedicating 0.7 percent of GNI to ODA in 2015, noted the report.

The Eurostat monitoring report, published every two years, provides a quantitative assessment of whether the EU is moving in the right direction. Endit