The Committee of the Regions (CoR) supports the more active participation of local and regional authorities in the planning and implementation of the Europe 2020 Strategy. It does so also by highlighting the need for better and more complete data and statistics as well as by exploring possible new ways of measuring and presenting regional performance.

In 2013 Ecologic Institute and the Institute for Managing Sustainability at the Vienna University of Economics and Business developed a Regional and National Progress Indicator to assess progress towards the eight Europe 2020 targets covering employment, education, research and development, climate change and energy sustainability, and poverty and social exclusion.

The indicators build on the five Europe 2020 headline targets and underlying eight indicators. These EU-level targets have been translated into individual national targets by the Member States reflecting more closely and appropriately national conditions and potentials.

The calculations for both the regional and the national progress indicator use a distance-to-target approach and reflect the diversity of European regions and Member States as well as the significant economic and social impacts of the economic and financial crises.

The EU27 as a whole averages just over 60% of the distance to the targets. Five countries – the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Slovenia – have on average achieved at least 80% of the path to the 2020 targets while five other countries – Luxembourg, Spain, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta – are less than 50% along the way. The remaining countries fall in between the top and bottom five countries, yet their indicator-specific developments can be markedly different. Spider charts were used to show each country’s and region’s progress ‘profile’ on the available indicators.

While not prescriptive in nature, the aggregate progress indicators can support monitoring of the Europe 2020 goals and objectives at different geo-political scales. They also highlight the need for greater investment in data collection to ensure complete and timely coverage of all dimensions of the Europe 2020 strategy.