Eco-anxiety is described as chronic worry or distress about the future impacts of climate change. At the same time, Europe has seen the rise and the development of an environmental conscience, shaped by policy innovation, institutional engagement and increasing societal awareness. This study addresses a key question: are European countries with a stronger environmental conscience also those with higher levels of eco-anxiety?

This study explores the evolution of eco-anxiety in the European Union from 2016 to 2024, using data from three waves of the European Social Survey (ESS8, ESS10 and ESS11). The analysis highlight disparities in levels of eco-anxiety across countries and sociodemographic groups, including age, gender, religion, political preferences. We also examine how personal values and beliefs about the causes of climate change (human vs. natural) shape individual levels of eco-anxiety. To contextualize our findings, we also present a literature review on eco-anxiety in Europe, comparing results from psychometric tools, such as the Climate Anxiety Scale, with large-scale survey data from the ESS. We provide longitudinal insights into the evolving relationship between environmental conscience and eco-anxiety in Europe. The coupling of environmental conscience and eco-anxiety we aim to provide a unique and valuable perspective on how collective awareness influences personal emotional responses to the climate crisis.

In the debate about preferences for top-down or bottom-up approaches to policymaking, especially with regard to sustainability challenges, there tends to be a consensus that for the policies to succeed one needs to count on the acceptance and participation of communities. However, in the day- to-day practicalities of policymaking, community participation is usually constrained to consultation during the planning process. Research, as one of the sources of information used as the basis for policymaking, replicates this narrow approach both in research frameworks and practices. Communities perceive researchers as external parties, interested only in extracting information from them, instead of helping them or enabling their long term-betterment. Change in the approach to research funding and research practice, to enable full engagement of communities in sustainability transitions research activities and policymaking is urgently needed. Combining the author’s own experiences’ working with communities and analysis of funding criteria from a sample of funders, the argument of this article is that ownership of the actions empowers communities, enabling improvements in perceptions and connection between researchers, policymakers and citizens, making positive sustainability transformations possible.

In this paper, we will analyse the relationship between space and sustainability. It is based on the research of a paper on the same topic from 2019, which found that economic sustainability was the main concern of space agencies with the European Space Agency as a case study (Hoerber, Wenger, Demion, 2019). In the past five years, this topic has really increased in importance, which can be seen in the number of academic and popular articles written on it. It seems that beyond economic sustainability, environmental concerns have become more important in space and for space technology on Earth. The social aspects of sustainability have mostly been neglected, except for the economic spin off of job creation. This is not particular to the space industry, but is widespread in it. The past five years have not changed much of that only that with space travel and space settlement becoming a real possibility, human aspects such as well-being, health and even housing on other planets have also found some consideration.

The Farm to Fork Strategy, one of the flagship initiatives of the European Green Deal, aims to accelerate the transition of our food system to a sustainable one. This would involve, among other characteristics, to ensure that everyone has ‘access to sufficient, safe, nutritious, sustainable food’. However the problem of food poverty and food affordability has been largely absent from the EU level of policy and high level discourses have denied up until recently that food poverty is an issue in Europe. It is under the umbrella of ‘food security’ that some measures that could contribute to reduce the problem have been taken, but it is still seen as something left to the national and regional levels of policy. This paper argues that there is room for food poverty to be addressed at the EU level, and the crisis created by the Covid19 pandemic first, and the war in Ukraine more recently, with the interruption of global food supply chains, opens a window of opportunity to take a more integrated approach to food poverty related policies. This may involve further reforms to the ever-changing (but never enough) Common Agricultural Policy, but also a deeper reflection of what it is understood as a sustainable food system. To explore this issue, this paper uses a case study analysis based on the recently developed Global Food Security Index and its indicators (affordability, availability, quality and safety, natural resources and resilience). It will assess how these indicators relate to the three pillars of sustainability (economic, social, environmental) and how they are reflected or not in the Farm to Fork Strategy and related policy measures of a selection of European countries.

This communication aims to present two chapters from the edited volume The European Environmental Conscience in EU: finance, innovation, and external relations. We apply Hoerber’s methodological framework which defines the European environmental conscience (EEC). This framework identifies four key dimensions of the EEC: the link between energy and environmental policies, the innovative nature of solutions, the legitimacy of EU institutions, and the role of grassroots support for effective governance.

The first chapter, written by Christoph Weber, examines the macroeconomic role of the European Central Bank in supporting climate change objectives. Using tools such as the greening of bond holdings, financial stress tests and the integration of sustainability objectives into monetary policy, Weber shows how the ECB's actions contribute to the EU Green Deal.

The second chapter, written by Maxence Tétard and Marjorie Tendero, focuses on digital sobriety as a microeconomic response to environmental challenges. It highlights the importance of individual and organizational practices, such as optimizing digital infrastructure, reducing electronic waste, and raising public awareness about the ecological footprint of digital technologies.

Together, these chapters illustrate how Hoerber’s framework offers a valuable perspective to understand the interplay between macro and micro-level approaches in advancing the EEC.