Effectiveness of European Green Deal implementation in EU countries
a DEA/Benefit-of-the-Doubt approach
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/EiP.2026.8Keywords
European Green Deal, Data Envelopment Analysis, Benefit-of-the-Doubt, efficiency frontier, European Union, Eurostat indicatorsAbstract
Motivation: The European Green Deal (EGD) provides a common EU framework for climate neutrality, resource efficiency and a just transition, but Member States differ markedly in structural conditions and implementation capacity. Existing assessments rely mostly on monitoring exercises, composite indicators or MCDA rankings; less attention has been paid to frontier-based efficiency benchmarking of EGD outcomes.
Aim: The study assesses relative EGD effectiveness in 25 EU countries using a DEA/Benefit-of-the-Doubt approach and Eurostat EGD indicators. The analysis covers 2013-2021, with 2019 treated as the strategic reference point. A SAW index is calculated from 20 transformed indicators, while the DEA/BoD model uses five indicators selected through correlation analysis, variance analysis, PCA and LASSO.
Results: The results show substantial heterogeneity. Sweden, Latvia and Estonia hold strong positions in both the composite indicator and DEA/BoD assessment. In 2021, the efficiency-frontier or super-efficient group includes Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Estonia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Croatia and Finland, whereas Czechia, Belgium, Poland and Bulgaria show the largest efficiency reserves. Contribution-share and robustness checks indicate the importance of waste generation and PM2.5-related premature mortality. DEA/BoD complements ranking-based assessments by identifying benchmark countries, frontier distance and efficiency reserves.
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