Sustainable Development in the EU

The challenges of globalisation, technological progress and limited world resources that are typical of elevated consumption must be necessarily addressed in a manner that reflects both socio-economic and environmental problems. One relevant approach to these problems is represented by so-called sustainable economics. This approach cannot address traditional measures of economic performance such as GDP or GNP and requires a new methodology for the measurement of socio-economic activities in the environmental context. In this chapter, we present widely used indicators of sustainable development, namely, the Better Life Index, the Ecological Footprint, the Happy Planet Index, and the Environmental Performance Index. The content and appropriate uses of these indices in the EU countries are discussed, devoting special attention to the CEE countries. We also investigate relationships among those indices. Based on a quantitative analysis, we identify clusters of EU countries with similar levels of sustainable development. Furthermore, we classify the EU countries according to their effective use of natural resources relative to economic output.