ABSTRACT The European Union (EU) is highly committed to the 2030 Agenda. However, the EU countries' structural heterogeneity and differing stages of development complicate the efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and raise questions about whether uniform policies can effectively address diverse needs. To analyze the determinants of the SDG Index score (SDGIS), the EU‐27 countries were considered over the 2012–2023 period, grouped into Cohesion and Non‐Cohesion countries, and panel data regression models and fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) were applied as complementary approaches. The panel data regression results revealed a main decoupling: while in Cohesion countries, Gross Domestic Product per capita significantly drove SDGIS attainment, it lost statistical significance in Non‐Cohesion countries, where institutional transparency and inequality reduction emerged as the main drivers. The fsQCA analysis revealed pronounced equifinality, identifying five distinct pathways to high SDGIS attainment in Cohesion countries and only two in Non‐Cohesion countries. Overall, by revealing that as countries develop, the determinants of sustainability may shift from material wealth accumulation to governance quality and distributive justice and that the same level of SDGₐttainment can be obtained through qualitatively different causal configurations, our findings challenge the paradigm of “one‐size‐fits‐all” that underlies the current EU cohesion policy and provide an empirical foundation for redesigning EU policies around differentiated, context‐sensitive interventions: growth‐oriented strategies for Cohesion countries and governance‐quality strategies for Non‐Cohesion countries, aligned with smart specialization principles.
Almeida et al. (Mon,) studied this question.