Environmental performance assessment in the EU: A challenge for the sustainability

In the last decades, the European Union has developed a set of environmental policies whose main objectives have been to protect natural capital and to develop a resource-efficient and green economy. These issues are essential to secure the sustainability in the long-term of the member states. The objective of this paper is to develop the Environmental Performance Assessment Composite Index, in the framework of the 2050 Europe vision, which will be applied to the European Union 28 in the period 2000-2014. It might allow policy makers to obtain information about the strengths and weaknesses of each member state in natural capital, use of sustainable and efficient resources as well as use of more environmentally friendly resources. The results suggest that Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Italy and Germany have the better scores in environmental performance assessment. However, Slovakia, Romania, Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania have the lowest scores in the composite index. Specific reinforcing actions are proposed for them in order to reduce their environmental impact. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.