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This paper assesses three sustainable development strategies -- the European Union's Sustainable Development Strategy in its revised version, the Mediterranean Strategy for Sustainable Development and Slovenia's Development Strategy -- according to the level of sustainability these strategies provide. Deriving from three diverse sustainable development regimes, selected strategies are scrutinised for the presence of the five general principles of effective sustainable development strategies promoted by the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Building on George and Kirkpatrick's (2006) framework for analysis, we concentrate on principles of strategic planning and sustainable development, and a coordinated set of measures to ensure their implementation. The results reveal that the major differences between the assessed strategies are present in the sophistication of the theoretical bases and the integration of three main pillars of sustainable development (i.e. environmental, economic and social). In general, the assessed strategies reflect a high degree of inclusiveness of a variety of interests. However, there is a common weakness among them in terms of implementation, be it in the provision of adequate resources, the guarantee of adequate implementing capacity of the institutions designated for implementation or the precise definition of the institutional framework responsible for the implementation of the strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]