Description:
The past decades have marked a gradual shift towards greater reliance on goal-based strategies, also due to the reckoning of significant limits in the neoclassical economics model of GDP growth. This led policymakers and experts to look for a more multi-dimensional measures of progress, with an agenda focused on a medium-term vision for society, the economy and the environment. At the EU level, the transition towards goal-based agendas became evident with the launch of the decade-long Lisbon strategy in 2000, and later with the Europe 2020 strategy. The global agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 brought new momentum for goal-based strategies. The need to go beyond GDP was endorsed i.a. by the UN Secretary General's Report on "Our Common Agenda", and by the Think7 Communiqué under the G7 Japanese Presidency in April 2023. That said, the ongoing debate on "beyond growth", while fully aligned on the need to go beyond GDP, has not converged on a univocal alternative framework. And in the meanwhile, new priorities have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic and the threat of war in Europe in the near future.