The ideational dimension of the European Green Deal. Old ideas being repackaged?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to answer the question of whether, and if so to what extent, the package of initiatives announced by the European Commission in 2019, called the European Green Deal (EGD), represents a new approach to the mechanistic, sustainability and environmental paradigms. The former two paradigms have provided the ideological foundations for many past actions, including European Union policies, while the latter one is in its nature an intellectual construct proposed for enactment. This study is focused on the ideational dimension and consisted of comparing the EGD with the aforementioned paradigms in four aspects: a) the way it understands human's relationship with nature, b) the way it views civilisational development, c) its attitude towards knowledge, science and technology, and d) in the axiology adopted. The study is based on the literature on the subject and the 27 EU documents from 2019–2022 constituting the EGD, which were examined using a qualitative content analysis method. The study demonstrated that there has been a change in all analysed aspects of the EGD, with the areas where material interests play a role being the least susceptible to it.

Keywords

• European Union
• EU
• European Green Deal
• paradigm
• ideas
• EU policies