SOCIAL CONVERGENCE IN THE EU-28 COUNTRIES IN THE LIGHT OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EUROPE 2020 STRATEGY. THE DEA APPROACH

Increase in convergence of the European Union countries has been focal for the European Union leaders, from the very beginning. The aim of the study is to examine whether any social convergence occurred in the EU-28 from 2010 to 2016, in the context of the implementation of the recommendations and the social policy objectives formulated under the Europe 2020 strategy. This article is based on an overview of the literature on the subject and the statistics of Eurostat. The methods of assessing the effectiveness of objects is DEA and sigma convergence. It is a new approach to convergence measurement based on the assessment of the efficiency diversification of the European Union countries and it has clearly been the value added to the analyses conducted so far. The obtained results in the scope of the estimation of the effectiveness were then compared to the existing results produced with the use of the methods generally recognized and employed in the literature. Conclusions were presented in the final part of the study.