GAL- Re-imagining the Sustainable Development Goals EPLO/ European Law and Governance School (ELGS)

Overview

• Supported by: Professor Edoardo Chiti, Full Professor of Administrative Law, Member of the Academic Senate, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa

The program focuses on the governance architecture of the SDGs, fifteen years after their adoption and just four years before the 2030 deadline. While the SDGs are formally universal, their implementation has relied on a complex interplay of multilateral institutions, domestic administrations, transnational networks, public-private partnerships and private standard-setting bodies. Yet, the simultaneous decline of trust in multilateralism, the emergence of fragmented regulatory regimes, and the rise of geopolitical rivalries have raised fundamental questions: Can the SDGs still deliver their transformative promise? And what role can GAL-inspired reforms play in revitalizing their governance framework?

To address these concerns, GAL 2026 will examine how different SDGs illustrate the strengths and limits of contemporary global administration. The program anchors its discussions around four Goals whose implementation particularly highlights tensions between multi-level governance and the weakening of multilateral cooperation.

Taken together, these four SDGs highlight a central theme of GAL 2026: the tension between the need for coordinated global governance and the growing constraints on multilateral action. Through the lens of global administrative law, participants will assess:

• how effectively existing institutions and regulatory networks have contributed to the realization of the selected SDGs, and
• whether institutional innovation or deeper reforms are required to administer future global challenges