Différenciation Est-Ouest dans les trajectoires européennes du développement durable

The sustainable development paradigm has become the global reference through which development efforts are observed. Thus, the United Nations Statistical Commission stated the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and adopted a set of 232 monitoring indicators to assess the efforts undertaken by each country to achieve these goals. Facing the diversity of models and development trajectories, socio-cultural heritages and territorial realities, studying the way in which countries seize the stakes of sustainability remains a relevant issue. In particular, within the European Union which presents a great regional disparity, our main purpose is to study how development levels modulate investment in the three pillars of sustainable development, namely environmental, social and economic. In a first step, we identify standard trajectories of European dynamics in sustainability through a multidimensional analysis that takes into account the three pillars and the Human Development Index (HDI). Each of the three pillars is built from the SDG indicators referring to it. In this framework, the HDI is a better criterion to assess the development of a country since it synthesizes measures in three key dimensions: life expectancy, education and economic growth. In a second step, we cross identified trajectories with countries? territorial features to assess the importance of European regional disparities and particularly the East-West differentiation regarding the implementation of the principles of sustainable territorial development. Is this differentiation the result of a long process that has shaped the national specificities of sustainability strategies and policies, or is it rather the more recent and persistent imprint of the old Soviet system in the Eastern countries? Would not it be the revealer of a to-be- completed integration within the EU?