Sustainable Development in the Visegrad Countries: An Analysis of Decent Work and Economic Growth

The Visegrad Group is an alliance of the four countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. This group focuses on cultural, economic, energy and military cooperation. These countries belong to the group of 193 United Nations countries that adopted the EU's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015. There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals and one of them is to provide decent work and economic growth. Since the Visegrad Group should enhance economic cooperation, it is vital to analyze what is the current situation of this particular Sustainable Development Goal in the Visegrad countries. This goal is measured by nine indicators, including: employment rate, inactive population due to caring responsibilities, involuntary temporary employment, long-term unemployment rate, people killed in accidents at work, real GDP per capita, resource productivity and domestic material consumption, and young people unemployment. Each of these measures are presented and then compared with the result of the EU's average. The Visegrad countries have been improving in these indicators, on average, however they still need to work on increasing real GDP per capita and resource productivity as well as decreasing inactive population due to caring responsibilities. This will lead them to catch up with the EU's average.