How has the EU progressed towards the Sustainable Development Goals?: Report 2018

Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, has just issued the publication “Sustainable development in the European Union — Monitoring report on progress towards the SDGs in an EU context – 2018 edition”. It provides a statistical overview of progress towards the SDGs in the EU.

Apart from the monitoring report, Eurostat is proposing a range of complementary materials:

– for a quick overview: a short brochure providing a visual summary of the monitoring report’s main findings,

– to play with: interactive visualisation tools for some of the 100 EU SDG indicators. A completely new and innovative digital publication “SDGs & me” helps the reader focus on issues that are of interest to them and compare their country with others,

– to focus on individual goals: the series of Statistics Explained articles,

– everything under one roof: Eurostat website section on Sustainable Development Goals.

The main goals

Overall, based on the indicators selected to monitor these goals in an EU context, the EU made progress towards most of the 17 SDGs over the past five years. Progress for some goals has been faster than for others. In addition, within goals, movement away from the sustainable development objectives also happened in specific areas. These trends are described in the thematic chapters on the individual SDGs in the monitoring report.

The EU made strongest progress over the last 5 years towards the overall achievement of SDG 3 ‘good health and well-being’, followed by SDG 4 ‘quality education’ and SDG 7 ‘affordable and clean energy’.

For eight SDGs, the EU made overall moderate progress over the past five years. Such moderate trends are visible for SDG 11 ‘sustainable cities and communities’, SDG 12 ‘responsible consumption and production’, SDG 5 ‘gender equality’, SDG 8 ‘decent work and economic growth’, SDG 17 ‘partnership for the goals’, SDG 1 ‘no poverty’, and, to a minor extent, SDG 15 ‘life on land’ and SDG 2 ‘zero hunger’.

SDG 9 ‘industry, innovation and infrastructure’ is characterised by an equal number of positive and negative developments of the indicators.

SDG 10 “reduced inequalities”

Based on the selected indicators, the EU appears to have moved away from the sustainable development objectives for SDG 10 ‘reduced inequalities’ over the past five years. This is due to the continued rise of income inequalities within EU Member States, a development that is not specific for the past five years but that has already been visible since 2005.

In the case of four goals – SDG 6 ‘clean water and sanitation’, SDG 13 ‘climate action’, SDG 14 ‘life below

water’ and SDG 16 ‘peace, justice and strong institutions’ – trends cannot be calculated due to insufficient data

over the past five years.

In the monitoring report, indicator trends are assessed over two periods (when allowed by data availability): the short term, accounting for developments over the past five years, and the long term, looking at the trends over the last 15 years, to reflect the 15-year scope of the 2030 Agenda. To provide a snapshot of overall development for each SDG, a synopsis presents a summary at goal level, while thematic chapters, one for each of the 17 SDGs, provide a detailed assessment of each related indicator.