Sustainable development in the new methodology of Serbia's accession to the EU

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse all elements of sustainable development, especially in the context of the new enlargement policy for the Balkan countries. Basically, the analysis is based on the concept from Agenda 2030. The second concept consists of two methodologies for EU accession, where the criteria are grouped through chapters (old methodology) and clusters (new methodology). The research question in this paper is whether the new EU accession methodology is a guarantee for achieving better values of indicators of sustainable development or not. Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA), more precisely the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP method), is used to prioritize sustainable development criteria based on the sustainable development indicators through two different concepts. The results of the analysis showed that the achievement of the SDGs according to the Agenda 2030 was established methodologically by country, while respecting the specificities of countries and their policies. Also, the results showed that the acceptance of the new methodology, that is, organizing the chapters into clusters and accordingly regrouping the indicators, showed better results. The conclusions from this article can be applied in making decisions about choosing the best approach to sustainable development for individual countries.

Keywords

• sdgs
• national strategy framework
• eu membership
• accession process
• chapters
• clusters
• agenda 2030
• ahp method