Alignment of the European policy agenda with the sustainable development goals: the case of SDG 8 and SDG 12

• Autor(a) principal: Nicolau, Mariana Isabel Pereira
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/32130
• topic: Sustainable development goals; European Parliament; Members of the European Parliament; Plenary sessions

The proposed work seeks to study the factors that influence the alignment of the European legislative agenda with the Agenda 2030, namely concerning the traits and characteristics of Members of the European Parliament MEPs. The research focuses on two specific Sustainable Development Goals, SDG 8, concerned with ensuring sustainable economic development and decent work, and SDG 12, which focuses on sustainable production and consumption patterns. To achieve the proposed aims, a qualitative analysis was conducted of all plenary sessions of the European Parliament (EP), between 2016 and 2019, that refer to any of the topics addressed in one or both SDGs. This analysis was carried out using NVivo software and all sessions were coded until a database was obtained, which connects the MEPs with their speeches around these two grand topics, that is the object of support for the discussion of this dissertation. The goal of the present research is to grasp the influence of MEPs' personal factors and traits on the approach to the SDGs under review, and thus on the legislative agenda of the European Parliament. The results show that men are more active in the EP towards issues concerning SDGs 8 and 12. Older MEPs also demonstrate more activity than their younger colleagues. With regard to the length of experience in this Institution, the data revealed that MEPs with less experience time are more intervening on the studied issues. Finally, left-wing parties are the ones that register the most interventions in the EP arena. The MEPs also reveal a tendency to approach SDG 8 more frequently than SDG 12.