Sustainable Development at the Frames of the Strategy “Europe 2020”

Abstract

The environmental protection and the sustainable development, the growth that takes place in parallel and equal promotion of the economy, the society and the environment are now identified necessities and important priorities of the international community. The sustainable development in accordance to the Strategy of “Europe 2020” provides the ability to use technological and scientific achievements in such a way as to create alternative political proposals to ensure increased productivity, efficiency, social consistency and of course, the prudent management of natural resources. This research aims to explain the importance of the implementation of the sustainability/sustainable development/growth and how it is linked to EU’s development in some areas (economy, environment). It was created a specific thematic index concerning the sustainable development, to ascertain how various macroeconomic variables and variables related to the environmental growth affect it. Based on the index of “Europe 2020”, the way was developed by Pasimeni (2011), in order to quantify and measure the progress of the EE28 countries. The analysis of the performance of each country member of the EU, in the frames of this strategy, as far as concerned their economic and environmental conditions, but also, the development of a methodological framework for the measurement of their benefits through the creation of a panel data model regression, are the objects of interest of this paper. The results showed the deviation of the countries of their goals set by 2020, concluding that institutional factors influence the course of an economy more than macroeconomic factors do.