Abstract
Successful sustainability transition and climate action require a coherent policy and cooperative environment between different levels of government. Multi-level governance (MLG) represents a functional approach to revealing and overcoming the barriers that might impede effective, efficient, and timely implementations. This chapter seeks to present the main challenges and related actions for MLG with respect to the sustainability transition in Europe. MLG mechanisms between the European Commission (EC) and national, regional, and local governments/municipalities were discussed on the basis of five MLG aspects defined in the chapter. The main focus has been put on the Commission and the subnational governmental bodies, considered as the two ends of the vertical axis of multi-level governance. Nature-based solutions (NBS) were included in the discussion because of their role in achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as being a distinct concept related to sustainability transition. While the Commission’s fundamental tool to mainstream SDGs is incorporating them into economic and social policies, the interplay between the EC and the member states mainly occurs in the platforms in which these policies are shaped. The EU acts substantially stimulate sustainability transition at the local level. On the other hand, the subnational governmental actors form networks to influence the supranational bodies to obtain further roles and resources concerning SDG policies and implementations. The examination concludes that certain gaps in MLG persist to varying extents.
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Acknowledgments
This chapter was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and supported by the ÚNKP-22-5 new national excellence program of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology from the source of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund. The research reported in this paper and carried out at BME has been supported by the NRDI Fund TKP2021 based on the charter of bolster issued by the NRDI Office under the auspices of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology (project id: BME-NVA-02). We would like to thank Kaya Schwemmlein, Antonio Moretti, Damien Pasquet, and Marcell Mészáros for their recommendations and support during the writing and reviewing of the manuscript.
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Poyraz, A.Y., Szalmáné Csete, M. (2023). Multi-level Governance of Sustainability Transition in the European Union. In: Leal Filho, W., Dinis, M.A.P., Moggi, S., Price, E., Hope, A. (eds) SDGs in the European Region . Implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals – Regional Perspectives. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17461-2_88
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