FOSTERING SUSTAINABLE INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE AS A PART OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AGENDA IN THE EU COUNTRIES: SPATIAL ANALYSIS

The EU has prepared a sustainable development package that is a part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The core of this agenda is sustainable development goals. One out of the seventeen sustainable development goals set by the EU is to promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization as a powerful driver for improving standards of living and ending poverty worldwide. This goal is measured by seven independent indicators including CO2 emissions, employment in medium and high technology manufacturing sectors, gross domestic expenditure on R&D, patent applications to the European Patent Office, R&D personnel, collective transport modes in total passenger land transport, and rail and inland waterways activity in total freight transport. The aim of this paper is to analyze industry, innovation, and infrastructure in the EU countries in order to find out: (1) which countries are leading in this field, (2) which countries need to work on these issues so that they can catch up with the leaders. The following methods are used in order to address the above-mentioned research questions: the taxonomic measure of development, linear ordering, spatial trend models, and spatial autocorrelation approach.