Archive:Overview of status and progress of EU Member States towards the SDGs
Overview of status and progress of EU Member States towards the SDGs
Data extracted in May 2020. Planned article update: June 2021.
Highlights
This article presents a statistical overview of the status and progress of EU Member States towards the 17 SDGs, based on the EU SDG indicator set. The status of each SDG in a Member State is an aggregation over all the indicators of the specific goal, each scored on a scale between the best and worst performing countries. The progress score of the Member State is based on the average annual growth rates of all assessed indicators in the SDG over the past five years. The same approach towards aggregating individual indicator trends into a synthesised index per SDG is used in the synopsis article for the EU.
Such a synthesised presentation allows for a quick and easy overview and facilitates communication. However, applied to individual Member States, it entails the risk of simplification and might obscure details about underlying phenomena. Moreover, it has to be kept in mind that the status in a country depends to a certain extent on its natural conditions and historical developments. Therefore, users are invited to read the more detailed information at indicator level in the articles 1 to 17 on each SDG. Detailed data for the EU SDG indicators on a country level are also available on the Eurostat website and have been presented in the 2020 European Semester country reports.
Full article
How is the status and progress assessed?
The status of a specific SDG is an aggregate score over all the indicators of the specific goal [1]. The calculation uses a scale from the worst to the best performing country. Data refer mainly to 2018 and 2019. Figure 1 presents an example of the calculation of the status score for SDG 16.
Progress is an aggregate score of the short-term (5 year) growth rates of all assessed indicators per goal. The methodology uses a scoring function and is identical to the calculation of progress at EU level as presented in the introduction (also see Annex III available in paper format and as a downloadable (PDF file) on page 340 for more details on the calculation method). Data refer mainly to 2013-2018 or 2014-2019.
The status score of a country is a relative measure, showing its position in relation to all other Member States. A high status consequently does not mean that a country is close to reaching a specific SDG, but it signals that this country has achieved a higher status than many other Member States. The progress score of a country, on the other hand, is an absolute measure based on the indicator trends over the past five years, and its calculation is not influenced by the progress achieved by other Member States.
How to interpret the graphs?
The vertical axis shows the status of SDGs in the depicted country relative to the worst and the best performing country in the EU. SDGs in the upper part of the graph have a status that is closer to the best performing country, for SDGs in the lower part the status is closer to the worst performing country. The right side of the graph displays SDGs where the country has made progress whereas the left side indicates movements away from the SDGs. This results in four “quadrants” which can be characterised as follows:
I. The country is progressing towards these SDGs, and on average the indicator values are towards the higher end of the range.
II. The country is progressing towards these SDGs, but on average the indicator values are towards the lower end of the range.
III. The country is moving away from these SDGs, but on average the indicator values are towards the higher end of the range.
IV. The country is moving away from these SDGs, and on average the indicator values are towards the lower end of the range.
Presentation of Member States’ status and progress
Belgium
Bulgaria
Czechia
Denmark
Germany
Estonia
Ireland
Greece
Spain
France
Croatia
Italy
Cyprus
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Hungary
Malta
Netherlands
Austria
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovenia
Slovakia
Finland
Sweden
Direct access to
More detailed information on EU SDG indicators for monitoring of progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as indicator relevance, definitions, methodological notes, background and potential linkages, can be found in the introduction of the publication ’Sustainable development in the European Union — Monitoring report - 2020 edition’.
Notes
- ↑ The (comparative) status is a composite score based on the relative indicator values so for each indicator in the goal, the worst country value corresponds to 0 points and the best to 100 points. The country status is then the average points across all indicators.