Model-based development of scenarios for a sustainable Europe : methodologies, assumptions and first results

This report seeks to support the formulation and implementation of policies which help to steer the European Union towards a sustainable future. It charts out plausible development paths, assuming that such paths will have implications for the conceptualisation, adoption and implementation of environmental policies. In fact, depending on developments in areas ranging from demographics to foreign policy, contexts can arguably be found which make it more difficult to adopt and implement sustainability-oriented policies and measure and contexts which are actually supportive. In addition to the qualitative analysis, the report then presents simulations based on a macro-economic-environment model which indicate how the interaction of key assumptions and policies may play out in the future and how key environmental and socio-economic variables respond to different assumptions and policy settings. The simulations show that the quantitative dimensions of the above contexts exert far from negligible impacts on these variables compared to both the baseline and plausible scenarios, thereby underpinning the view that policy makers should be sensitive to the environments in which their policies are being implemented