Measuring the progress towards a resource-efficient European Union under the Europe 2020 strategy

Resource efficiency is an essential priority of the Europe 2020 Strategy, which under the Flagship Initiative for a resource efficient Europe calls for a shift towards a resource-efficient economy. In this context, indicators and composite indexes could be useful in order to evaluate the progress of the European Union towards the objectives of the Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe. This paper benchmarks the 28 European members based on a composite index, namely the Resource Efficiency Capacity Index. The index is based on the calculations of 29 indicators, which are grouped in three dimensions. The first dimension benchmarks EU-28 members according to the promotion of waste recycling, to the support of research and innovation in resource efficiency and to the implementation of environmental taxation. The second dimension benchmarks EU members according to energy efficiency in residential buildings and the third dimension according to the development of more sustainable transport modes. The three dimensions are aggregated for a final ranking. The results indicate that Denmark received the highest ranking with a composite index value of 3.35, followed by Sweden (3.22) and Finland (3.13) in 2013. The establishment of more effective policies is necessary in the member states with the lowest scores in the Resource-Efficiency Capacity Index: Slovakia (1.8), Malta (1.92) and Poland (1.93). Although the European Union has made considerable progress in this issue in the last decade, many actions should still be faced to increase resource efficiency to inform more about the concept of life-cycle thinking to increase waste recycling, to make more attractive the system of public passenger transport, or to increase the energy efficiency of residential buildings, among others. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.