A comparison of economic, environmental and social performance of European countries: a sustainable development goal index

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) show the breadth of the concept of sustainability and indicate the changes that are needed to provide a future for next generations. A quantitative approach allows the performance of several countries to be framed to assess the state of progress. This work is based on multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) in which 58 indicators referring to the period 2018–2020 are considered and the performance of 27 European countries is compared. The MCDA makes it possible to calculate a SDG Index that rewards Sweden with positive results also for the Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland. The overall value is broken down by the three dimensions of sustainability (economic, environmental and social) in which again Sweden excels and has also a leadership position in two macro-goals such as security and energy. In contrast, Denmark prevails in innovative future and Netherlands in waste circularity. The main implications of this work confirm that Europe is proceeding to the SDGs goals in an uneven manner, and therefore, there is a need to identify a program that will see greater cooperation among several countries. In fact, Europe will be united when it pursues together a pragmatic vision of sustainability that goes beyond ideology in order to identify solutions that will benefit more stakeholders.