The EU Green Deal and its impact on economic transformation provoked a slightly forgotten free market vs. market regulation discussion, but in the light of a new context—economic and environmental performance development. The economic shock caused by COVID-19, which transformed economies and societies, intensified this discussion. This article analyses the impact of economic freedom on economic performance and environmental performance in European countries. The article contributes to a gap in the literature, because, to date, research has examined the effects of economic freedom, or some of its components, on economic or environmental measures in groups of nations with a lacking sustainable development context. In addition, the mixed results obtained led to confusion in perceptions and knowledge about the influence and usefulness of economic freedom for economic and environmental performance. We also found mixed results regarding the influence of economic freedom on economic and environmental performance, but the introduction of a new concept—the optimal level of economic freedom—organized the different results into a coherent logical sequence. The paper provides original empirical evidence and specifies the targets of structural reforms. The results are thus useful for policymakers to develop more appropriate and efficient economic freedom.

A rich volume of literature has analysed country investment attractiveness in a wide range of contexts. The research has mostly focused on traditional economic concepts—economic, social, managerial, governmental, and geopolitical determinants—with a lack of focus on the smartness approach. Smartness is a social construct, which means that it has no objective presence but is “defined into existence”. It cannot be touched or measured based on uniform criteria but, rather, on the ones that are collectively agreed upon and stem from the nature of definition. Key determinants of smartness learning—intelligence, agility, networking, digital, sustainability, innovativeness and knowledgeability—serve as a platform for the deeper analysis of the research problem. In this article, we assessed country investment attractiveness through the economic subjects’ competences and environment empowering them to attract and maintain investments in the country. The country investment attractiveness was assessed by artificial intelligence (in particular, neural networks), which has found widespread application in the sciences and engineering but has remained rather limited in economics and confined to specific areas like counties’ investment attractiveness. The empirical research relies on the case of assessing investment attractiveness of 29 European countries by the use of 58 indicators and 31,958 observations of annual data of the 2000–2018 time period. The advantages and limitations of the use of artificial intelligence in assessing countries’ investment attractiveness proved the need for soft competences for work with artificial intelligence and decision-making based on the information gathered by such research. The creativity, intelligence, agility, networking, sustainability, social responsibility, innovativeness, digitality, learning, curiosity and being knowledge-driven are the competences that, together, are needed in all stages of economic analysis.

The European Union (EU) is a unique economic integration organization with standard policies that seek common goals among members, such as convergence and sustainable development. It aims to become a climate neutral economy by 2050. With structural reform implementation, each EU member country can work towards these set goals in accordance with their own welfare. However, a trade-off between the individual welfare goals of a country and the common goals of the EU should be reached. This article analyzes the impact of structural reforms on sustainable development performance in European countries. The article contributes to a gap in the literature because, to date, previous research has examined the effects of structural reforms on economic or environmental measures in groups of nations but has often lacked an adequate sustainable development context. In addition, the clustering of European Union countries according to different social policy regimes requires clarification of the perceptions and knowledge about the influence and usefulness of structural reforms for sustainable development performance. The research uses the panel data of the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom and Sustainable Development Goals agenda from the Eurostat database. The data cover 27 countries of the European Union for a period of 11 years (2010–2020). The research panel includes 297 observations. We found different results regarding the influence of structural reforms on sustainable development performance under different social policy regimes and the regulatory trap for homogeneous sustainable development in the European Union. The paper provides original empirical evidence and specifies the targets of structural reforms in relation to sustainable development. The results provide guidance for policymakers to develop more appropriate and efficient sustainable development policies.

This paper aims to investigate the smart economic development (SED) patterns in Europe in relation to competitiveness. Motivational focus corresponds to global events: the fourth industrial revolution, transition to a low-carbon economy, economic shocks (such as the 2008 financial crisis, Brexit or the coronavirus pandemic), which requires rethinking development policies, targeting competitiveness increase and reducing imbalances in economic development. The analysis includes self-organising neural networks cluster analysis and correlations, comparative analysis of SED indicators structure and cumulative index estimation with World Economic Forum (WEF) global competitiveness index. The panel data set of 19 years from 2000 to 2018 for 30 European countries. Overall, cross-country examination suggests that European countries of higher competitiveness illustrate higher estimates in SED. The key determinants are juridical fairness, social responsibility, competence building, intelligence and welfare employment to develop smart patterns for reaching higher competitiveness. The limitations relate to the particular sample of European countries and gathering statistical data and a methodology of the SED index calculation. In addition, the paper contains a macroeconomic environment focus on competitiveness estimation. Further research may be improved with micro and mezzo environment incorporation at a cross-country analysis level. By linking well-known terms of competitiveness and economic development with a concept of smartness, new approaches to policymaking emerged. The methodology presented in this paper has implications for territorial cohesion policies, competitiveness and branching strategies. The combination of SED sub-indexes and WEF GCI might aid a more accurate ex ante measurement. The findings are essential for fostering a smart approach in economic development for long-term competitiveness. This paper provides original empirical evidence about the relationship between SED and competitiveness and adds new knowledge that smartness becomes a way for building countries’ competitiveness by identified two profiles of SED patterns by development stages, namely, integrated to economic development and institutional-based which is divided to focus and balanced.