Addressing the Polycrisis With the Same Logic That Created It? A Critical Analysis of Sustainability Discourses in the EU Strategic Agendas Between 2014 and 2024

Abstract

This article examines how the EU frames problems and solutions regarding the current interconnected crises of climate change, inequality and other social, economic and environmental problems. The EU's main strategic priorities are summarised in the EU Strategic Agenda, but the latest agenda was published in 2024 and has not yet been sufficiently examined or compared with its predecessors. Therefore, this article analyses the assumptions and discourses that underpin the agendas of 2014–2019, 2019–2024 and 2024–2029. It offers a critical discourse analysis informed by the sustainability trilemma and postcolonial intersectionality as a theoretical and interpretive framework, and guided by the following research question: How have sustainability discourses in the EU Strategic Agenda developed between 2014 and 2024? The analysis interprets the sustainability discourses in all agendas to be underpinned by neoliberalism, Eurocentrism, anthropocentrism and geopolitical realism, which point to an overarching logic of competition, separation and social, economic and environmental hierarchies. The agendas appear to paradoxically address the polycrisis by using tools and strategies that are underpinned by the same logic and basic assumptions that may have caused the polycrisis in the first place.