Enablers and barriers to European Green Deal implementation: A systematic review and framework proposal

Abstract

[Abstract] The European Green Deal was presented in late 2019 as a leading action plan to transform Europe's economy with ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 55 % by 2030 and for the EU to become climate neutral by 2050. Through a systematic literature review of 77 research articles published from 2020 to 2024, main enablers and barriers to achieve European Green Deal objectives are identified and categorized. A conceptual framework is proposed integrating nine categories of enablers and barriers to implementation with the eight objectives of the European Green Deal, according to their distinct relevance in the literature: (1) Public policy, governance and regulatory; (2) Economic; (3) Cultural; (4) Market; (5) Technology and infrastructure (6) Supply chain management; (7) Stakeholder engagement; (8) Business strategy and company culture; and (9) Business competences. The results also show that the literature overlooks aspects like the social dimension of the European Green Deal or coordination of supply chain related practices like reverse logistics. Accordingly, we suggest policymakers to: (1) Redesign policy initiatives considering these nine categories of factors and their interactions to more systematically seize the opportunities and address the obstacles to implementation; (2) Providing financial incentives for circular products and clean energy technologies (3) Adopting a holistic approach to sustainable strategies including economic, technological and organizational factors (4) Integrating social protection policies to EGD framework to reduce poverty and emissions.