A ‘smart growth’ strategy for sustainable development

Amid the insults and recriminations which followed the collapse of the EU budget negotiations in June 2005, few people noticed that EU leaders succeeded in reaching agreement on a new sustainable development strategy. Such a strategy could, potentially, be pivotal in defining how the EU economy evolves in the decades to come and offer a way forward for the European social model. Sustainable development implies to focus simultaneously on the economic, social and
environmental dimensions of economic development.