Inter-connected challenges. An overview of bioeconomy in Europe

The use of renewable biological resources from the land and sea to produce food, materials and energy is one of the potential solutions to implement the green transition. The bioeconomy is developed in Europe, however it shows a different trend in several countries. The methodology used in this paper is based on multicriteria decision analysis and considers three parameters as criteria: workers, turnover and value added. This work investigates the bioeconomy sectors in 28 European countries using the socio-economic indicator for the bioeconomy (SEIB). We provide useful data for all stakeholders and propose a quantitative analysis emphasizing the contribution of each bio-based sector. The results show that Ireland is ahead of the Netherlands and Denmark in the SEIB for all sectors and leads in the SEIB for manufacturing and bio-energy sectors followed by Denmark. The differences with other European countries are significant. Some countries present a rather weak situation (Slovakia and Malta). The values of the SEIB are mainly linked to performance in two macro sectors: (a) agriculture and (b) manufacture of food, beverages and tobacco. The decomposition analysis highlights the performance of each country according to the socio-economic parameter and the bioeconomy sectors, and it is highlighted how performance monitoring allows for the identification of corrective actions. Some policy implications are proposed to support the development of bioeconomy sectors by targeting inter-connected challenges that aim to foster sustainability.