“The Competitive Sustainability Index is an excellent and helpful addition to the tool-box available to the EU and others in seeking to measure performance in a way that is innovative and integrates the different elements in a coherent way.  It will be of much utility to the Commission and its Annual Sustainable Growth survey and to the development of the competitive sustainability approach.  We welcome it and encourage others to use, test and develop it to our mutual benefit" said EU Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni.

Developed by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Breakthrough Energy and Cambridge Econometrics, the CSI is the first index to develop metrics to measure competitiveness in the context of the transition to a smart, green, climate neutral economy, addressing immediate needs for resource resilience and energy security as well as social equity, stability, public legitimacy and material prosperity.

Incorporating newly available data from the ECB and Eurostat that draws on the EU Taxonomy to assess economic performance in all the key innovation ecosystems as well as the economy more widely, and endorsed in its theoretical framework and statistical coherence by a thorough audit by the JRC, the CSI offers the first holistic picture of how countries perform when environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors are also properly incorporated into economic strategy. It therefore has the potential to be used as a monitoring tool for the European Green Deal overall.

Jolita Butkeviciene, Director at the JRC also welcomed the index: “There is no doubt that we need a rapid transformation of our societies. The Competitive Sustainability Index can be a game changer for measuring EU’s sustainability transition. At the JRC, we looked into the reliability and statistical soundness of this index and our analysis confirms that the Competitive Sustainability Index is a well-designed and technically sound framework that can help to stimulate public interest and policy discussions on the multiple aspects that shape a country’s competitive sustainability.”

Click here to read more about the Competitive Sustainability Index and to use its interactive tool.

The Competitive Sustainability Index is also available in the Composite Indicators & Scoreboards Explorer here.