Visions for a sustainable Europe

In this paper, we argue that one way to address the concept of a sustainable Europe is through the use of scenarios. To that end, we discuss the current state-of-the-art in scenario development, both from a methodological point of view, as well as in terms of a review of existing scenarios that address the notion of sustainable development in a European context. We identify a number of deficiencies in current scenario studies, both in general and for European scenarios in particular. We then discuss the VISIONS project, which aims to develop visions for a sustainable Europe, taking the challenges into account that are derived from the identified weaknesses. Finally, the draft scenarios for Europe as they have been developed in the first year of the VISIONS project are presented. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.