The Convergence in the Sustainability of the Economies of the European Union Countries between 2006 and 2016

Abstract

On the background of the exponential growth of the world’s population, doubled by the decrease of natural resources and the continuous, accentuated degradation of the quality of the environment, with global warming as its main effect, ensuring the sustainability of economic and social processes is becoming a growing concern. At the European Union level, it is important that all member countries adhere to and implement common measures on sustainable development, which involve, inter alia, ensuring the convergence of policies and their effects at EU level. The EU through detailed SDGs presents the structure of a system of indicators structured on 17 objectives, indicators taken over, implemented, and calculated by EUROSTAT. The study proposes, based on a Composite Index of Sustainable Development of EU Countries’ Economies (ISDE-EU), the analysis of the convergence of the sustainability of EU states’ economies, not so much at individual level, but at cluster level, each cluster containing EU countries with similar/close ISDE-EU levels and dynamics. The results of the analysis confirm the partial existence of the beta and sigma convergence of the sustainability of EU countries’ economies. Please note that, at the time when we processed data, the UK was an EU state, which is why it was included in the analysis.