Abstract
The EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU SDS) was launched in the 2001 Göteborg European Council. Its purpose is to establish the general policy framework that incorporates three pillars such as economic prosperity, social equity and environmental protection. In addition, its strategy has been managed in line with open method of coordination. The paper examines the EU SDS from two viewpoints: governance modes and policy discourses. In so doing, the paper suggests a research strategy that reconsiders the meanings of European integration from studies of policy development of individual fields in comparative perspective. The paper first takes a general view of the evolutionary process of EU environmental policies, and by emphasising the legislation-oriented policy development on the basis of Articles 2, 100 and 235 EEC in the 1970s to 90s, the paper demonstrates that the 2001 EU SDS opened a new stage of the evolutionary process. Second, the paper examines the governance mode of EU SDS that can be characterized essentially as open method of coordination, paying attention to three aspects of EU SDS: voluntary national actions, stakeholder consultation prosesses and non-legislative instruments. On these considerations, the paper points out the democratic problems of open method of coordination, which may weaken the political power of the European Parliament as well as the critical function of civil society organisations. On this basis, the paper suggests potential democratic problems emerging in the evolutionary process of EU environmental policies. Third, the paper considers the policy discourse of EU SDS, which ambiguously constructs the general view of a promised land of EU citizens that should be brought about by the EU. At the same time, the paper also finds discursive contestation between neo-liberalist and social democrat tendencies around the meanings of the concept of sustainable development in EU SDS, and then points out the dominance of a neo-liberatist discourse against a social democratic one. In concluding remarks, the paper suggests a comparative research scheme to investigate governance modes and policy discourses among individual policy fields, so that we can reflect on the possible way forward of European integration if the Community method has been withdrawn and open method of coordination together with neo-liberalist discourses has gained ground.
