Achievements of the European Union member states toward the development of sustainable agriculture: A contribution to the structural efficiency approach

The ranking of decision-making units can be performed by measuring their efficiency. However, the discriminatory power of efficiency measures is sometimes compromised, and complete rankings are not attained. Additionally, environmental performance must be considered when assessing the sustainability of operations. This paper applies the “average contribution to structural efficiency” index to measure the environmental performance of the European Union Member States’ agricultural sectors. The contribution index considers all of the possible combinations of observations when assessing states’ environmental performance. This process allows for a complete ranking of the countries under consideration. The agricultural performance of Bulgaria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, as measured by the conventional data envelopment analysis, approached the production frontier. Therefore, these countries could not be ranked based on the conventional data envelopment analysis model. The application of the contribution index showed that Romania, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia were ranked as the best-performing countries. In addition, France and Belgium showed positive contributions to structural efficiency, although they were not classified as efficient countries. Therefore, cooperation with these countries would allow other countries to exploit their agricultural resources in a more productive and sustainable manner.