Cited by 199European Union Policy and GovernanceCultural and political discourse analysisSustainable Development and Policies

Sustainability in the European Union: Analyzing the Discourse of the European Green Deal

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Eckert, Eva, Kovalevska, Oleksandra·2021·Journal of Risk and Financial Management

Abstract

In the European Union, the concern for sustainability has been legitimized by its politically and ecologically motivated discourse disseminated through recent policies of the European Commission and the local as well as international media. In the article, we question the very meaning of sustainability and examine the European Green Deal, the major political document issued by the EC in 2019. The main question pursued in the study is whether expectations verbalized in the Green Deal’s plans, programs, strategies, and developments hold up to the scrutiny of critical discourse analysis. We compare the Green Deal’s treatment of sustainability to how sustainability is presented in environmental and social science scholarship and point out that research, on the one hand, and the politically motivated discourse, on the other, do not correlate and often actually contradict each other. We conclude that sustainability discourse and its keywords, lexicon, and phraseology have become a channel through which political institutions in the EU such as the European Commission sideline crucial environmental issues and endorse their own presence. The Green Deal discourse shapes political and institutional power of the Commission and the EU.

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  • LCT's goal is to improve sustainability dimensions of cosmetic products in a prominent and holistic manner.

    “LCT's goal is to improve sustainability dimensions of cosmetic products in a prominent and holistic manner.”

    From Use of Waste from the Food Industry and Applications of the Fermentation Process to Create Sustainable Cosmetic Products: A Review (2024) · cites this paper as [16]

    Section 3.2 discusses sustainability and ecological modernization, while section 5.2 discusses circular-economy goals. Neither addresses life cycle thinking (LCT) or a goal for cosmetic products. Searches for “LCT life cycle thinking cosmetic products” and “cosmetic products life cycle thinking holistic sustainability dimensions” found no passage supporting the attributed claim. (LLM, conf=0.78)

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1 of the 37 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 9

  1. Drew, Paul, and John Heritage. 1991. Talk at Work: Interaction in Institution Settings et al. 2013. In State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? Washington: Island Press, pp. 3-16.
  2. Engelman, Robert. 2013. State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? Washington: Island Press, pp. 3-16. Eurobarometer. 2017. Special Eurobarometer 468: Attitudes of European Citizens towards the Environment. EU Open Data Portal. November 9. Available online: data.europa.eu/euodp/data/dataset/S2156_88_1_468_ENG (accessed on 1 May 2020).
  3. Janicke, Martin. 2008. Ecological modernization: New perspectives. Journal of Cleaner Production 16: 557-65.
  4. Kopnina, Helen. 2019. Green-washing or best-case practices? Using circular economy and Cradle to Cradle case studies in business education. Journal of Cleaner Production 219: 613-662.
  5. Kress, Gunther, and Robert Hodge. 1979. Language as Ideology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
  6. Nichols, Ryan. 2007. Introducing the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Vancouver: The University of British Columbia. Available online: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231608775_Linguistic_Inquiry_and_Word_Count_LIWC_pronounced_Luke_ and_other_useful_facts (accessed on 1 May 2020).
  7. Slatin, Craig. 2019. The green new deal-A revolutionary concept. New solutions. Journal of Environment and Occupational Health Policy 29: 133-37.
  8. Stubbs, Michael. 2001. Words and Phrases: Corpus Studies in Lexical Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.
  9. World Commision on Environment and Development. 1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Authors
Eckert, E., & Kovalevska, O.
Affiliations
  • Charles University (CZ)
  • Metropolitan University Prague (CZ)
Corresponding author
  • Eckert, Eva
  • Kovalevska, Oleksandra
Venue
Journal of Risk and Financial Management
Publisher
MDPI AG
Published
2021-02-17
Volume
14
Issue
2
Pages
80
ISSN
  • 1911-8066 (ISSN-L)
  • 1911-8074
OpenAlex
W3132688225
Cited by
199
References
37
Citations by year
2026: 33 · 2025: 59 · 2024: 38 · 2023: 36 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 8
FWCI
88.89
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Journal of risk and financial management (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
Metropolitan University Prague
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › European Union Policy and Governance
  • Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Cultural and political discourse analysis
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law › Sustainable Development and Policies
Keywords
sustainability discourse, European Green Deal, European Commission, political discourse, critical discourse analysis, environmental policy, institutional power, greenwashing, EU environmental policy

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