Abstract:
The actual development challenges impose new criteria of national performance evaluation,
the concept of wellbeing tending to be measured not just in terms of economic and social dimensions,
but also vs. the environment. Accordingly, considering the national environmental performance
among the EU countries in 2006–2019 period, we grouped them and concentrated on the clusters
registering the highest and lowest levels, analyzing how the components of the human and economic
dimensions influence it. Applying panel data models, our main results emphasized that, firstly, for
the countries with a better environmental performance, sufficient drinking water, safe sanitation,
education, gender equality, and good governance were significant; in the countries with the lowest
levels of environmental wellbeing, sufficient food, sufficient to drink, education, and income distribu tion were insignificant, while the remaining components were relevant. Secondly, in both groups of
countries, organic farming and public debt were significant; nevertheless, differences were observed
for genuine savings and employment, for which the peculiarities of economic activities seemed to be
materialized as different influences upon environmental wellbeing. Our study draws alarm signals
regarding the development patterns applied in the EU, seeming to have results that strengthen the
sustainable goals, but not sufficient for exceeding the traditional growth-oriented model.
