Sustainability in the European Union: Analyzing the Discourse of the European Green Deal
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Methodology
3. Context
3.1. The Ideology of the Green Deal
3.2. Sustainability Criticism: Eco-Innovation and Plastic Waste Generation
4. Results
4.1. The Green Deal’s Content: Mediating Meaning
4.2. Sustainability Phrases and Keywords
1. climate | 112 | 0.98% |
2. green | 85 | 0.75% |
3. (un)sustainab/(ility)(ly)(le) | 83 | 0.73% |
4. environment/(al)(ally) | 67 | 0.59% |
5. energy | 65 | 0.57% |
6. transition | 48 | 0.42% |
7. invest/ment/ments/ors | 48 | 0.42% |
8. econom/y/ies/ic | 47 | 0.41% |
9. in/action/s | 46 | 0.40% |
10. emission/s | 44 | 0.38% |
11. develop/ment/mental | 35 | 0.30% |
12. ensure | 34 | 0.30% |
13. global/ly | 33 | 0.29% |
14. financ/e/ing | 33 | 0.29% |
15. bio/- | 32 | 0.28% |
16. ambitio/n/us | 32 | 0.28% |
17. product/s/ion | 30 | 0.26% |
18. public | 28 | 0.24% |
19. innovat/ion/ive | 27 | 0.23% |
20. soci/al//ally/ety/eties | 22 | 0.23% |
environment/(al)(ally) | 0.51% (cf. the Green Deal 0.59%) |
circular | 0.19% (cf. the Green Deal, 0.17%) |
econom/y/ic/ics | 0.48% (cf. 0.41%) |
global/ly | 0.26% (cf. 0.29%) |
Bio | 0.21% (cf. 0.28%) |
Action | 0.35% (cf. 0.4%) |
invest/ment | 0.32% (cf. 0.42%) |
develop/ment/mental | 0.51% (cf. 0.3%) |
public | 0.23% (cf. 0.24%) |
ensure | 0.17% (cf. 0.3%) |
financ/e/ing | 0.14% (cf. 0.29%) |
innovat/ive/ion | 0.48% (cf. 0.23%) |
(un)sustainab/(ility)(ly)(le) | 0.19% (cf. 0.73%) |
4.3. LIWC Analysis: Concepts and Word Categories
4.4. Choosing Grammatical Patterns
4.5. Summary
5. Discussion
5.1. Circulating the Discourse and Creating Hegemony of the EU Public
5.2. The Parallel Discourse of Sustainability: Challenging “Growth”
6. Conclusions
6.1. Practical Limitations and Implications for Further Research
6.2. Overall Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
References
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1 | At the Goals and values section of the EU official website sustainable development is correlated with balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive market economy with full employment and social progress, and environmental protection (https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-in-brief_en). |
2 | For example, two most used words in the adjective category were neither and as that we excluded in Results but did include the words following them, i.e., affordable, free, rich et al. |
3 | The authors point out that the EC recognizes the existence and importance of ecosystems, sees the connection between a restored natural environment and human health, points out the problem of traditional industry relying heavily on the extraction of resources, speaks in terms of the transformation of the industrial sector as necessary for climate neutrality but remains vague as to the content of that transformation and remains uncritical towards the ICT sector, pp. 8–9. |
4 | In thermodynamics, entropy refers to the fact that physical properties of a material can only decrease over time and thus it is impossible to keep a fixed efficiency rate in recycling. |
5 | Sauvé (1996) pointed out that the concept of sustainable development is not self-explanatory but subsumes multiple concepts and paradigms, and the many discourses on “environmental education for sustainable development” subscribe to the concept of alternative development. However, the notion of sustainable development cannot adequately express characteristics of alternative development because it is just a particular segment of alternative development. |
6 | Bogiazides (2011) further predicted that, “sustainability [would] continue to hold sway as the all-encompassing imperative in matters of planning and development”. Decision makers, at all levels of governance, would continue acknowledging it as “their guiding star, the most potent weapon in their ideological arsenal, enabling them to appear operating for the common good while obfuscating the divisive conflicts of the present”, p. 6. |
7 | There are many additional examples, for instance, Digital technologies are a critical enabler for attaining the sustainability goals; New technologies and scientific discoveries, combined with increasing public awareness and demand for sustainable food, will benefit all stakeholders; New technologies, sustainable solutions and disruptive innovation are critical to achieve the objectives of the European Green Deal. |
8 | For instance, …To move towards that vision, this strategy proposes an ambitious set of EU measures; The Commission facilitated a cross-industry dialogue and now calls on the industries involved to swiftly come forward with an ambitious and concrete set of voluntary commitments). |
9 | For instance, New approaches—developing innovative business models, reverse logistics, or designing for sustainability, for instance, can do much to help minimize plastic waste at source, while achieving further economic, environmental, and social benefits; Stepping up the recycling of plastics can bring significant environmental and economic benefits; Reducing fragmentation and disparities in collection and sorting systems could significantly improve the economics of plastics recycling. |
10 | For instance, The Commission proposal for a Neighbourhood, Development, and International Cooperation Instrument proposes to allocate a target of 25% of its budget to climate-related objectives, which actually means that the proposal rather than EC members proposes to allocate rather than will allocate 25% to objectives rather than specific actions. |
11 | Nominalization is a language strategy of avoiding active verbs along with their agents, and replacing them with deverbal nouns. |
12 | Similarly, in the sentence Participants would be encouraged to commit to specific climate action goals the modal would be avoids indicating who will encourage the participants. |
13 | These solutions are evident in the following excerpt: The Commission will promote the development of international standards to boost industry confidence in the quality of recyclable or recycled plastics. It will also be important to ensure that any plastics sent abroad for recycling are handled and processed under conditions similar to those applicable in the EU under rules on waste shipments, supporting action on waste management under the Basel Convention, and developing an EU certification scheme for recycling plants. |
14 | Abstract diction saturates claims throughout the Green Deal, e.g., in the statement, “To keep its competitive advantage in clean technologies, the EU needs to increase significantly the large-scale deployment and demonstration of new technologies across sectors and across the single market.” |
15 | Relexicalization is a strategy of modifying semantic meaning habitually associated with a lexical item and endorsing an alternative one supporting an ideology that is prioritized. |
16 | The discourse has spread in academia as well is the article Environmental Action Programmes of the European Union: Programmes Supporting the Sustainable Development Strategy of the European Union describing the EU environmental policies projected until 2020 as programmatic and the EU as having an active role in producing meanings of sustainable development (Halmaghi 2016, Romanian military education institute). |
17 | The data came from an officially commissioned source and show that the EU discourse has echoed throughout ordinary citizens’ opinions displayed in social media. On the start of the current coronavirus pandemic the following post of a long-term resident of Europe appeared in social media confirming currency of the image that the EU has sought to establish for itself, i.e., being an authority on sustainability and environmental protection: Hold on, my beloved Europe. The European Union consists of the most noble, intelligent and educated people. Europe is the largest donor of humanitarian aid and the largest donor of clean air for the whole world. Here, we have the most radical measures to save our planet. [Now,] we have to pay for the mistakes, dirt and negligence of others. |
18 | For specific national regulations, see lobbyeurope.org/rules-and-regulations/. |
19 | (Ossewaarde and Ossewaarde-Lowtoo 2020) remind us that, … “The failure to transcend the frame of mind that corresponds to that system results in the neglect of community-based solutions, that is, of local democracies that determine the direction and content of their local economies, including the amount of energy used. Energy commons could have been mentioned and highlighted. From the standpoint of inclusion and justice, the inclusion of citizens in political decision-making regarding their earth system must arguably be more than getting them to cooperate with authorities, industry, and the EU’s administrative bodies”, p. 10. |
Concept/Syntactic Category | The Most Frequent Words Attracted to the Concepts and Categories |
---|---|
‘power’ | confidence, best, lead, leading, leader, ambition, authorities, competence, competitive, and workers |
‘money’ | trading, banks, business, consumer, economic, finance |
‘bio’ | life, heart, food, feed, living, water, healthier, biological |
‘drives’ | verbs and verb forms: to protect, to risk, to prevent, to curb, to inhibit, avoided, avoiding, protecting nouns and words used as nouns: unwanted, threat, risks, protection, loss, security, prevention, disasters adjectives safe, careful, secure, hazardous |
‘social’ | communication, together, leader, help, ownership, partners, social, member, encourage, share, group, community, friendly, families |
‘compare’ | neither, greatest, lower, lowest, larger, best, higher, stronger, largest, better, healthier, unique, same |
Verbs | warming, passing, being lost, use, must, put, will, bring, accepted, needed verbs associated with explaining, informing and sharing: to explain, give, help, inform, meet, send, share, accept, affect verbs associated with business: pay, sell, trade |
Adjectives | unique, green, new, fair, modern, natural, same, greatest, active, national, additional, massive |
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Eckert, E.; Kovalevska, O. Sustainability in the European Union: Analyzing the Discourse of the European Green Deal. J. Risk Financial Manag. 2021, 14, 80. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm14020080
Eckert E, Kovalevska O. Sustainability in the European Union: Analyzing the Discourse of the European Green Deal. Journal of Risk and Financial Management. 2021; 14(2):80. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm14020080
Chicago/Turabian StyleEckert, Eva, and Oleksandra Kovalevska. 2021. "Sustainability in the European Union: Analyzing the Discourse of the European Green Deal" Journal of Risk and Financial Management 14, no. 2: 80. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm14020080
APA StyleEckert, E., & Kovalevska, O. (2021). Sustainability in the European Union: Analyzing the Discourse of the European Green Deal. Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 14(2), 80. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm14020080