The era we are all living in is surely marked by a myriad of challenges and risks: climate change, extreme weather phenomena, biodiversity loss, AI emergence, IT development, geo-political tensions, economic uncertainty, and more. Environmental concerns seem to top the list as the path to a more sustainable future and higher welfare goes through better environmental quality. In this regard, it becomes of the utmost importance to study the pool of relevant determinants steering environmental quality in an attempt to realize what has to be done to effectively approach the present and future environmental risks. The European Union has taken major steps to ensure a gradual shift towards a Net Zero carbon emissions future, yet substantive work has to be done as major challenges remain. The objective of this study is to navigate environmental quality across a sample of European countries for the last 24-year period (2000–2023). Secondary data were retrieved from the following databases: World Bank, Our World in Data and Swiss Economic Institute to allow for an empirical analysis which sheds light on the economic, financial and regulatory forces shaping environmental quality as measured by annual total emissions of carbon dioxide per capita. This study not only provides some up-to-date picture on a pressing matter such as environmental quality, but it also equips pertinent stakeholders, government authorities in particular, with the necessary insights to take well-informed, cautious policy decisions that would bring a positive turning point to the region and beyond.