From Digitalization to Sustainable Industrial Growth: Evaluating Romania’s Alignment with SDG 9 Targets

This research evaluates Romania’s alignment with Sustainable Development Goal 9 by examining the relationship between digitalization, innovation capacity, sustainable infrastructure, and industrial environmental performance within the European Union. Using Eurostat data for 2015 and 2023, the research applies hierarchical cluster analysis with Ward’s method and squared Euclidean distance to classify EU Member States according to seven indicators: gross domestic expenditure on R&D, R&D personnel, patent applications to the European Patent Office, sustainable passenger transport, sustainable freight transport, air emission intensity from industry—PM10, and high-speed internet coverage. The analysis identifies five clusters for 2015 and three broader clusters for 2023. The two cross-sectional classifications reveal different patterns of similarity among EU Member States, while substantial structural heterogeneity remains. Leading countries combine strong R&D intensity, high patenting activity, advanced digital infrastructure, and low industrial emission intensity. Romania remains in the structurally constrained cluster in 2023, despite strong high-speed internet coverage and favourable freight-transport performance. The findings show that digital infrastructure alone is insufficient to ensure sustainable industrial growth without stronger innovation capacity, technological output, and cleaner industrial transformation.