"Un-sustainable" Development Goals as a New Dimension of the European Monetary Union Core-periphery Dualism

While the persistent core-periphery dualism within the European Monetary Union (EMU) has been extensively studied, its relationship to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remains unexplored. This is surprising, given the EU's strong commitment to achieving the 17 SDGs by 2030. The SDGs encompass a broad range of economic, social and environmental targets and the pursuit of these goals through targeted economic policies could have significant macroeconomic implications and redistributive effects at country and region level. This research fills this critical gap by investigating two key questions: (1) Do the SDGs themselves reflect a new dimension of the so-called EMU core-periphery dualism? (2) How have changes in SDG scores for EMU country pairs influenced the existing coreperiphery dualism? Our findings shed light on the interaction between the SDGs and the EMU's internal cohesion, offering preliminary interesting policy insights.