Green European Journal, 15 December 2025
This month, members of the European Parliament, high-level EU policymakers, trade unions, civil society leaders, academic experts, and activists came together in Brussels for a follow-up event to the 2023 landmark Beyond Growth Conference. On the agenda: how to integrate post-growth policies into the EU’s poverty reduction strategies – from the upcoming EU Anti-Poverty Strategy and Intergenerational Fairness Strategy, to the new Action Plan to implement the European Pillar of Social Rights, and the 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework.
At the very least, the event demonstrated that a one-time fringe opinion – that economic growth is not a magic wand for eradicating poverty – is now moving firmly up the agenda.
The European Environment Agency has been calling for “growth without economic growth”, recognising that the obsessive quest for increasing economic output has been damaging for the environment and human health. A UN-backed Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth is being developed to encourage a human rights-based model of social investment that reduces dependency on growth. The new challenge facing the EU is therefore whether its socio-economic governance can reinvent itself, and bring about improved wellbeing without increasing the GDP.
