European Funds and Sustainable Development: Mapping the Research Landscape and Future Directions

Abstract

In the broader context of European integration and regional convergence, European Structural and Investment Funds have become the main channels through which the European Union achieves balanced territorial development and, progressively, the transition to sustainability. Besides the impressive number of academic papers on these instruments, the structure of this field of research has been rarely mapped systematically. This paper aims to fill this gap by conducting a bibliometric study of the scientific literature based on the publications in the Web of Science Core Collection covering the period 1998-2026. The study finds that the field has experienced a major thematic reshuffle: whereas initially the focus was on the macroeconomic impact and regional convergence, the current scholarly works identify sustainable development as the most pivotal topic in the academic debate, thus signifying the increasing congruence between the EU funding instruments and the European Green Deal as well as the 2030 Agenda. The results also show that governance, management, and quality have become the main themes in the recent research, thereby indicating a move to the institutional and procedural aspects of fund implementation. Geographically, the research highlights a continuing imbalance in scientific output, mainly from beneficiary countries such as Romania and Poland. On the other hand, the academic impact is still concentrated in Western European countries. These outcomes provide a well-structured view of the field and suggest several lines for further research. UDC: [336.581:502.131.1+001.811]:061.1EU; JEL: Q01, O52, R11