PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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development (March 1995) stressed the need to combat social exclusion and protect
public health.
[Emphasis added]
This definition is particularly interesting in several respects. Its middle section
contains a paraphrasing of the Brundtland definition, and the last two sentences once
again refer to the key dimensions of economy, environment and equity (“social
exclusion”), where we find the important additions of the time and public health
dimensions. Also note the interesting slip about the Copenhagen World Summit for
Social Development.
However, most revealing is the initial sentence, which
unequivocally privileges the economic dimension by defining sustainable development as
a sub-form of economic growth.
This definition thus also implicitly equates
“development” with “growth.” Comprised in a nutshell, we thus find the EU’s central
attitude towards sustainable development as a concept that places certain (environmental
and social) limitations on economic growth.
5.2.2 From the Treaty of Rome to the 4th Environmental Action Program
There is no mention of sustainability or environmental policy in the Treaty of
Rome which established the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957. Rather, the
primary objective of the EEC was the “harmonious development of economic activities.”
The first EEC environmental action program was adopted on November 22, 1973 in the
wake of the first UN conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. At
this time, environmental policy making remained both closed and technocratic, and issues
developed in an ad hoc and incremental fashion (Jordan 1998).