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How is the European Union progressing towards its Europe 2020 targets? A benefit-of-the-doubt window analysis

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Abstract

This paper quantifies and compares the EU Member States' performance evolutions from 2006 to 2018 towards their Europe 2020 target by a Window Analysis of the Benefit-of-the-Doubt method. The results show an overall positive trend for EU Member States in progressing towards the Europe 2020 strategy targets, but also a divide between different groups of Member States. In general, progress in the Europe 2020 strategy of new EU Member States was more outspoken than for old EU Member States. However, in spite of this modest progress, old EU Member States maintain higher performance levels on the Europe 2020 indicators. Southern EU Member States experienced more difficulties to advance in the Europe 2020 strategy as a result of the strong impact of the financial crisis in 2008, but from 2016 onwards, they started to recover and demonstrated progress in the Europe 2020 strategy.

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Notes

  1. This distance-to-reference normalization which involves taking for each headline indicator the ratio of the observed performance value and the national target value, is different to the min–max normalization procedure applied by Walheer (2019). Our preference for the distance-to-reference normalization is the straightforward interpretation in terms of relative distance to the national target values which particularly fits well in the setting of measuring EU-MS progress towards the national target values on the Europe 2020 headline indicators.

  2. For a detailed discussion of the WA-procedure, we refer the interested reader to Asmild, Paradi, Aggarwall and Schaffnit (2004).

  3. An alternative classification of the EU-MS is to differentiate between core EU-MS, semi-periphery EU-MS and periphery EU-MS as in Fedajev et al. (2020).

  4. A correlation analysis between the BoD-based Europe 2020 index scores and ranks as computed in the present study and the Europe 2020 index scores and ranks as computed in Pasimeni and Pasimeni (2016), Walheer (2018) and Stec and Grzebyk (2018) for the years 2009–2012 indicate high correlations (correlations varying between 0.6 and 0.85).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics and Business, Onderzoeksgroep Economie (ECON), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KULeuven), Warmoesberg 26, B-1000, Brussels, Belgium

    Charlotte Wüst & Nicky Rogge

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  1. Charlotte Wüst
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  2. Nicky Rogge
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Correspondence to Nicky Rogge.

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Responsible Editor: Harald Oberhofer.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1 Overview of National Target Quotas for Europe 2020 Indicators
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Table 2 EU Member State results of the window analysis
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Wüst, C., Rogge, N. How is the European Union progressing towards its Europe 2020 targets? A benefit-of-the-doubt window analysis. Empirica 49, 405–438 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10663-021-09528-3

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