The fallout from the Russian invasion in Ukraine and the energy and climate security crisis has put Europe’s sustainable economic development leadership through one of its most difficult tests so far. In response to these challenges, the EU has committed to dramatically accelerate the transition towards a more resilient, sustainable, just and inclusive socio-economic model. Delivering on this ambition necessitates bridging the policy ambition gap between the development and the implementation of EU-wide sustainable transition strategy, which could be aided by the introduction of new evidence-based policy instruments to monitor member-states’ progress, options and possible actions.

This study has been prepared for the European Commission and proposes an integrated approach for assessing the progress of European countries towards sustainable development and well-being under a “beyond GDP” paradigm. It analyses the information and data from the multitude of dashboards and indices on socio-economic development, environmental protection, and good governance to develop two alternative visions for a ‘Beyond GDP’ monitoring set of indicators to continuously assess the global progress to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The two versions of the Index were piloted for the EU-27 Member States with the results showing a moderate improvement of sustainable development indicators across Europe.

You can read the full report here.