An Assessment of EU 2020 Strategy: Too Far to Reach?

• Published in: Social indicators research Vol. 110; no. 2; pp. 659 - 680
• Main Authors: Çolak, Mehmet Selman, Ege, Aylin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.01.2013; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Candidates; Climate change; Coalitions; Composite indices; Councils; Countries; Datasets; Development sociology; Development Strategies; Economic Development; Economic growth; Economic indices; Economic performance; Employment; Employment indices; European Commission; European Council; European Union; Expenditures; Foreign Countries; GDP; Government; Gross Domestic Product; Human Geography; Indexes; Innovation; Journalism; Member states; Methodology; Microeconomics; Nordic Countries; Objectives; Political sociology; Political systems, parties and institutions; Public Health; Quality of Life Research; R&D; Renewable energy; Research & development; Research and Development; Research Methodology; Scores; Smart growth; Social Change; Social Indicators; Social Sciences; Sociology; Sociology of economy and development; Strategic management; Strategic planning; Studies; Sustainable Development; Sustainable growth; European Union; Europe; EU 2020 targets; EU growth priorities; Composite index; EU 2020 strategy; Measurement; Economic Policy; Growth; Priority; Strategy; Index; Crossnational Comparisons; Performance
• ISSN: 0303-8300; 1573-0921
• DOI: 10.1007/s11205-011-9950-2

In 2010, EU adopted a new growth strategy which includes three growth priorities and five headline targets to be reached by 2020. The aim of this paper is to investigate the current performance of the EU member and candidate states in achieving these growth priorities and the overall strategy target by allocating the headline targets into the priorities and the priorities into the strategy by the use of a composite indicator methodology. The paper determines how far away each member and candidate state is from the targeted levels of the priorities and the strategy by making a distinction between EU 15 and relatively new member states as well. The developed composite indices enable the observation of the performances of the member and candidate states in a single indicator for the overall strategy and each growth priority. The results of the strategy index and three growth priority indices show that Nordic states possess the highest index scores already having reached many of the targets; many new member states performed as good as EU 15 and some EU 15 states are placed at the bottom of the ranking with quite poor performance in reaching the EU 2020 strategy.