Comparative sustainability and resilience assessment in the EU27 countries

Building stable, adaptable and prosperous regions in the long term are objectives expressed by complementary concepts, such as regional resilience, sustainability and competitiveness. The need to achieve these objectives has been accentuated as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has multiplied the efforts of EU countries to find new ways to promote sustainable, resilient economies; thus, it is worth mentioning the EU programmes and the temporary financial instruments launched by the European Commission. In this context, the authors of this paper propose a methodology for analysing the links between a series of economic indicators, the Sustainable Development Goals and the pillars of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which represents the most important component of The Recovery Plan for Europe. The main research method is the cluster analysis, employed in order to identify the grouping of the EU countries according to their similar characteristics with regard to the 12 analyzed indicators (e.g., the multidimensional poverty indicator, expenditures for the research and development sector, the share of energy from renewable sources and the rate of use of circular materials, etc.). In addition to this main objective there is also a secondary objective, that of comparing the results obtained by applying cluster analysis with those determined by means of the Regional Competitiveness Index 2.0. This study has highlighted the poor scores of Romania and Bulgaria regarding social services, besides the best outcomes both for these indicators and for renewable energy sources recorded by the Nordic countries. The results obtained in this research may contribute to formulating policy recommendations in the case of EU countries with low performance in terms of sustainability and resilience indicators.