The Central and Eastern European Countries: A Cluster Analysis from a Bioeconomy Perspective

The bioeconomy is an area that encompasses more economic activities and is environmentally friendly and sustainable. Bioeconomy contributes to the economic development of a state by creating new jobs, expanding the business environment and making activities more efficient. In this context, the bioeconomy is an element of economic development that helps the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) to bridge the gap with the other countries in the west of the continent. The article aims to analyze the grouping of CEECs based on indicators specific to the bioeconomy, to highlight similarities or discrepancies between them. Moreover, we conduct this study in order to identify Romania’s position among CEECs in terms of specific bioeconomy indicators. The study is based on the European Commission’s Joint Research Center database for the bioeconomy indexes for these particular regions. We employed a hierarchical cluster method using SPSS software. The sample consisted of the 11 CEEC Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), and the period under review was between 2008 and 2019. The research indicators included turnover, number of workers, apparent labour productivity, and added value. The results show that Slovakia, Croatia and Romania form individual groups at an iteration level between 0 and 15, indicating significant discrepancies between countries in the region. The novelty of the research derives from the fact that there are no previous analyses that compare Romania’s status with other CEECs from the perspective of bioeconomy. Therefore, the paper can contribute to the implementation by the Romanian authorities of a set of measures necessary to develop the strategy dedicated to the bioeconomy based on good practices from the other CEECs.