EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION EFFORTS ON INCREASING THE CONVERGENCE BETWEEN THE EU AND ROMANIA - RETHINKING THE COMMON PROBLEMS

Abstract

The main aims of the paper are to asses and evaluate the effectiveness of environmental economics efforts on increasing the convergence between the EU and Romania in terms of environmental protection, from an economic perspective, using a cluster analysis applied for all the EU- 28 Member States (MS). In the paper are constructed seven clusters considering five determinant and topic related variables by using Hierarchical Clustering methodology, starting from the hypothesis of identifying presumptive environmental economic patterns among all the EU-28 countries. The results obtained during the research confirm the existence of determinant and significant elements that shapes a proactive environmental protection policy by grouping the MS in appropriate clusters. The paper suggested also that, despite of important financial efforts related to environmental protection and resilience, there is still a small impact on GDP growth.

Keywords

• convergence
• environmental protection
• energy consumption
• investments
• clusters analysis