The European Council will review in 2005 the Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) which was adopted in Gothenburg in 2001. Indicators for measuring the progress will be needed to assess whether the unsustainable trends identified in 2001 have been overcome and whether international commitments like those taken with the plan of implementation of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development have been translated into facts. This paper presents the contribution of the European Statistical System to the drawing-up of a first set of Sustainable Development Indicators for the purpose of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy.