# Evaluation of Sustainable Development in European Union Countries
## 2 Literature Review  
There are a number of contributions in the literature that analyze SD, wholly or partly, in different fields, such as, for example, Higher Education Institutes in India [9], the liquefied natural gas industry [10], the concrete industry [11], the construction industry in China [12], the textile industry in Brazil [13], urban sustainability in the Yangtze River Delta [14], etc. There are also authors and organizations around the world who have developed different systems or methodologies for evaluating SD that include its three dimensions. In 2015, the United Nations established the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which were intended to be considered as policies in all countries [15]. The 17 goals, comprising 169 targets and 244 indicators, have been implemented from 2015 to 2018 [16], becoming an international agreement that allows SDGs and their targets to be transformed into a tool for management and assistance to countries for formulating and implementing strategies that facilitate the distribution of resources and provide a framework for evaluating the evolution of SD [17]. Based on the Human Development Index (HDI) created by the United Nations, which classifies countries by the quality of life of their citizens, the Human Sustainable Development Index (HSDI) designed by [PERSON] and Gaffney [18] adds the per capita carbon emissions to gross national income, life expectancy at birth, and years of schooling. An application of HSDI to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration region from 2000 to 2015 is given in [PERSON] et al. [19]. [PERSON] et al. [20], [PERSON] et al. [21; 22; 23; 24], [PERSON] and [PERSON] [25; 26], [PERSON] et al. [27], [PERSON] et al. [28], and [PERSON] et al. [29] produce different frameworks, with different numbers of indicators, to assess all or a part of the SDGs formulated by the United Nations. It should be pointed out that the European Union (EU) has produced its own indicator set to monitor progress towards the SDG established by the United Nations in 2015. The set comprises 100 indicators, of which six are associated with each Sustainable Development Goal, with the exception of Oceans and Global partnership, which have five indicators [30]. The assessment method analyzes whether an indicator have moved towards or away from a sustainable development objective, as well as the speed of movement; the method, therefore, is a long-term trend analysis [31]. The results of the analysis by indicators for the 28 countries of the EU can be seen in [32]. However, there is no procedure for aggregating the information and obtaining a sustainability value by country and SDG, and an overall value which integrates SDG by country. The latest sustainability ranking update by countries provided by the investment specialist focused on sustainable investing, RobecoSAM [33] shows that, from November 2018, Sweden is the most sustainable country in terms of investment, followed by Denmark and Switzerland. The dimensions of human, environmental and economic wellbeing are considered in the Sustainable Society Index [34] for the calculation of a country ranking. Public data are used; each of the 21 indicators considered is assigned the same weighting, and the totals are weighted by population size. Among the results of the most recent study, carried out in 2016 [35], is the fact that renewable energy and energy savings are, together with organic farming, the indicators with the highest scores. Nevertheless, from the results of the study of 155 countries, no overall ranking was given based on all the indicators, and so there is no ranking of the countries assessed consisting of a single number. Yale and Columbia Universities, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, developed the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), published between 1999 and 2005, and later renamed the Environmental Performance Index (EPI).