European Green Deal: The transformation of sustainability context in the EU

In the European Union, sustainability concerns have long been a prevalent approach. The first step towards a sustainability approach was taken in 1990 with the decision of the EU Environment and Energy Council in Luxembourg to reduce carbon emissions. This was followed by the Kyoto Protocol, the EU Burden Sharing Agreement, the Europe 2020 Strategy, and especially the decisions made after the Paris Agreement, marking strategic steps towards sustainability. Initially, sustainability concerns emerged as an economically driven concept, stemming from the need to balance economic growth with environmental and social responsibilities. The European Commission has legitimized these approaches both politically and ecologically. The Lisbon Strategy and the Europe 2020 Strategy aimed to sustain economic growth, while the European Green Deal set the target of becoming carbon neutral. Thus, sustainability approach of the EU have become one of the core objectives of the European Union. This study comparatively analyzes the 2000 Lisbon Strategy, the Europe 2020 Strategy, and the European Green Deal in terms of how the sustainability context in the EU has been transformed. It particularly focuses on the European Green Deal, introduced as an EU action plan by the European Commission in 2019. The European Green Deal, which aims to minimize the impacts of the climate crisis, encompasses transformative policies to reduce Europe's carbon levels to a minimum by 2050. The study explains how the EU's strategies and policies for environmental protection and green transformation have evolved in terms of sustainability and the framework within which the focus has transformed, using a comparative content analysis. By addressing the research question, " How have the sustainability context of the EU been transformed from the 2000 Lisbon Strategy, the Europe 2020 Strategy, to the European Green Deal in a comparative perspective?'' The study finds out that the strategies developed by the European Union for sustainability, especially the European Green Deal, have significantly balanced the economic growth with environmental and social responsibilities. These strategies have played an important role in achieving the EU's sustainability goals, undergoing a substantial evolution in sustainability approaches, and making significant progress in achieving climate neutrality and environmental protection targets. Keywords: The European Green Deal, Sustainability, EU, Green Transformation, Environmental Protection.