The Great Shift is a unique contribution from a group of renowned experts and experienced policymakers united in the Independent Commission for Sustainable Equality (Progressive Society) to tackling today’s multiple and intertwined global and European crises, led by Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Teresa Ribera and former Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen.
This meta-crisis made of growing existential precarity across our societies, life-threatening climate change, entrenched poverty, gaping inequality, reckless tax evasion or declining biodiversity is undermining the sustainability of our societies. Fear about what the future will hold in such a crises-ridden world is spreading among citizens. Nationalist and extremist political movements are capitalising on this fear, threatening the very foundations of our democracies, of our values and of the European Union.
There is a legitimate and ever stronger demand for an alternative vision, one in which humanity and planet would come together in sustainable development, one in which every person can live a life in dignity and well-being. Young people are most eager to change the future, by changing the way our societies function. Identifying the policies that can make such change happen is a daunting task for many, even for policymakers themselves.
The meta-crisis we face can only be overcome through a comprehensive, complex and ambitious set of policies aimed at fundamental change. This is what The Great Shift is about. From economic and social policy to climate and ecological policy, from national to European and global policy action, the Independent Commission for Sustainable Equality provides, for the first time ever, a political pathway out of today’s crises-ridden societies into a different future of sustainable well-being. Across its 242 policy recommendations, the Great Shift explains how this can be achieved in concrete steps and actions.
Among its most game-changing recommendations are:
• A fundamental reform of public policy at national and European levels in the economic, social and ecological spheres by anchoring policy-making and public budgeting to essential well-being goals, instead of GDP.
• A change of gear at European level in defining legally binding sustainable goals, rules and norms to change the basic terms on which our economic system operates, including a European Responsible Capitalism Act, an EU-wide Anti-Poverty Law, and a Biodiversity Law.
• A change of gear at global level with regard to multinational companies through a legally binding United Nations Convention on Social Responsibility
• A reform of national social welfare systems into a new generation of social-ecological welfare systems, in order to protect citizens from future climate change consequences in material and health terms.
These, and many other, policy recommendations are detailed in the Great Shift. The policy report can be consulted and downloaded for free here. Available languages include English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
Progressive Society is an initiative sponsored by the Parliamentary Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament.
