Due to its broad economic, ecological and social consequences, illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing has become a major issue of international ocean governance that has received extensive consideration in law- and policy-making. However, scattered across a vast array of overlapping national, regional and international measures operated within various legal regimes, the effectiveness of the present legal framework against IUU fishing has not remained uncontested. Against the backdrop of regime pluralism and fragmentation, this article attempts to track back its evolution and reconstruct the seemingly opaque width of measures against IUU fishing as a multi-level approach and product of normative cross-fertilization between legal regimes.

Sustainable development as a concept and principle aims to find solutions to balance the needs of people worldwide with the resources and limits of the Earth’s ecosystems. Given their social responsibility in educating future generations and their status as societal role models, higher education institutions are increasingly expected to foster sustainable development on different levels. Against this backdrop, two major renowned European higher education institutions, the Universities of Goettingen (Germany) and Uppsala (Sweden), have committed themselves to driving sustainability in their operations. Hence, this exploratory case study critically examines the universities’ paths to greener campus operations as one facet of their sustainability approach, contributing to an area of research that is still limited. Using qualitative tools like content analysis, different data are analyzed to assess the status quo of measures to drive sustainability on campus.

The United Nations Conference on Development and Environment introduced the principle of sustainable development in 1992. Like no other political concept, sustainable development has shaped environmental, economic and development policy at the international European and German level. The concept and principle of sustainable development connects different lines of development of environmental, social and economic policy and the associated policy areas. The activities of a „Jean Monnet Chair for European Union and Global Sustainable Development Trough Law“ have been based on a research agenda, which has been tabled at the kickoff meeting and was updated in the course of the project and finally discussed at the closing in January 2022. This paper takes stock of some of the findings, which emerged in the course of activities of the Chair and of important questions left for future work.

People all over the world increasingly worry about the long-term consequences that our actions will have on future generations. Accordingly, calls to act “sustainably” have grown ever louder. Current discussions, however, often neglect to define the concept of sustainability and seldomly elaborate on the philosophical basis of sustainable development. This article shows how the concept of sustainability is connected to the interests of future generations and aims to elucidate what mechanisms, legal and otherwise exist to protect those interests.

The EU’s much-discussed 2016 Global Strategy coincided with an increase in international focus on sustainable development. Hence, the questions arise: How did sustainable development as a concept and EU External Action in its policy evolve and reciprocate? Was it a process of internationalization of EU policies or Europeanization of UN policies? By analyzing strategies and legislation in EU external sustainable development policy, this study aims at an overall understanding of the shift in EU sustainable development policies from mere economic-based strategies to what seems to be a method of integrating UN targets in their entirety. It finds an increased EU influence in UN policy-drafting since Lisbon, an embedding of those results in EU policy and hence, a strong interrelation between internal and external EU policies on the field. Such interdependence contributes to the understanding and interpretation of both, future UN and EU sustainable development policies.

While the concept of Sustainable Development has originally evolved in the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU) has incorporated its components step by step into its political and regulatory priorities. This process can be comprehended with a view to a series of milestones that reveal a certain governance approach. However, the approach is deficient to some extent, most importantly because of the three dimensions of Sustainable Development being acknowledged in an imbalanced manner. Efforts in the social area have not gained equal recognition compared to those in the environmental and economic areas. Moreover, the paper finds that related measures are somewhat fragmented given a lack of synergy and coordination. The reason for the EU’s, hence, sectoral or partial approach is mainly to be found in its political and legal foundation which, nevertheless, bears the potential for an ideally cross-sectoral or holistic approach. Depending on whether the EU will be able to more proactively use its legal and political tools in order to address these shortcomings, it may fulfil the role of a frontrunner in global endeavours for Sustainable Development or continue to lag behind its own aspirations.