This study explores the complex relationship between innovation and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions across the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors within the 27 European Union (EU) member states over the period 2017–2023. Drawing on a comprehensive dataset and grounded in theoretical frameworks, the research investigates how different innovation indicators—including broadband penetration, digital skills, public and business R&D expenditure, ICT training, and SME-driven innovations—affect sectoral CO₂ emissions. Using robust regression, the findings reveal a nuanced landscape: while ICT skills training, human resource mobility in science and technology, and SME business process innovations are associated with significant reductions in emissions, certain R&D investments and broadband penetration display positive correlations with emissions in specific service-oriented sectors. These results suggest that the environmental impacts of innovation are highly context-dependent and not uniformly positive. This study highlights the importance of strategically aligning innovation policies with sustainability objectives. Policymakers are encouraged to promote targeted digital training, support environmentally conscious R&D, and foster SME-led innovation practices. The results contribute to the growing discourse on sustainable innovation and provide actionable insights to advance the EU’s green transition.

Variations in government effectiveness across EU Member States are reflected in significant differences in socio-economic, fiscal and migration outcomes, which are rarely analysed within a single integrated framework. The analysis combines a structured bibliometric review with an empirical investigation based on EU-27 panel data covering the period 2015–2024, using co-occurrence and co-citation networks generated with VOSviewer to anchor the analytical framework in the literature. Government effectiveness, as measured by the Worldwide Governance Indicators, is analysed in relation to the risk of poverty and social exclusion (AROPE), GDP per capita, employment, social expenditure and migration dynamics. The results show that higher levels of institutional effectiveness are consistently associated with reduced social vulnerability, improved labour market performance and higher income levels in Member States. In contrast, the relationship with migration appears weaker and less robust across different econometric specifications. The interaction between government effectiveness and social spending also suggests that higher institutional quality can enhance the effectiveness of social policies in reducing vulnerability. Overall, the findings highlight the role of institutional quality as a conditioning factor of socio-economic outcomes, while indicating that the estimated relationships should be interpreted as conditional associations rather than strict causal effects.

The persistent shortage of ICT specialists across the European Union has intensified the strategic relevance of digital human capital as a determinant of labour market resilience and structural competitiveness. This study provides a systematic assessment of how ICT human capital—proxied by ICT tertiary enrolments, graduate output, and specialist employment—shapes the employment prospects of recent tertiary graduates in the EU-27 between 2013 and 2023. Drawing on harmonised Eurostat panel data and fixed-effects estimations with robust corrections for cross-sectional dependence, the analysis disentangles both direct effects and context-specific moderations associated with economic development, urbanisation patterns, and renewable energy penetration. Results demonstrate that ICT enrolments exert a consistently positive influence on graduate employability, whereas the labour market impact of ICT graduates and specialists is heterogeneous, reflecting differentiated absorptive capacities and sectoral saturation dynamics across Member States. Interaction effects further reveal that the urban concentration attenuates marginal returns to ICT education, while the integration of digital and green transitions remains institutionally underdeveloped. Collectively, the findings position digital tertiary education as a core pillar of sustainable employment formation yet highlight the necessity of coordinated policy architectures that align higher education pathways with regional labour market structures and the evolving green-digital policy agenda in Europe.

Tourism and sustainable development are two interlinked areas, as tourism in its traditional form can bring significant economic and social benefits, but can also have a negative impact on the environment and local communities. Due to global changes that have occurred in recent years, such as population growth, accelerated urbanisation, climate change and threats to biodiversity, research in tourism and sustainable development is becoming essential to create a more responsible and balanced approach to these activities. In this paper we have focused on presenting the evolution of tourism over the period 1992-2021 and testing linear multiple regression analyses to establish the nature and extent of relationships between tourism, economic, social and environmental indicators, thereby demonstrating the impact of tourism on sustainable development. The econometric applications carried out in this work - a combined model for studying the intention of tourists to return to a tourist destination, a regression model taking into account spatial elements for evaluating the defining characteristics of accommodation units in Romanian tourism and a growth optimisation model taking into account the influence of the environment - allow the quantification of different categories of impact generated by tourism activities.

The dual transition, green and digital, has become the strategic axis of the European Union, but quantitative evidence on the extent to which the adoption of digital technologies and artificial intelligence effectively supports the decoupling of economic growth from material consumption remains fragmented. Our study examines this relationship for the 27 Member States of the European Union over the period 2015–2024, using a balanced panel constructed entirely from verifiable official secondary data, without any interpolated values. The dependent variable is resource productivity, expressed as the ratio between gross domestic product and domestic material consumption. The results of the panel data analysis show that the variables are first-order integrated and cointegrated. The fixed-effects model indicates a positive and significant effect of digital adoption on resource productivity, with human capital being the most robust determinant, and research intensity also exerting a positive effect. An analysis of the recent series of AI adoption (2021, 2023, 2024) highlights a positive and significant association with resource productivity. The findings support the idea that digitalization and AI can be complementary to sustainability objectives, but not a substitute for investment in human capital and institutional quality. The study features a two-component architecture: a balanced panel (2015–2024) for digital adoption and an exploratory, repeated cross-sectional analysis for the recent series on artificial intelligence adoption.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires understanding how progress in health and well-being (SDG3) impacts human development, economic performance, and environmental sustainability. This study analyses the effects of selected SDG3 indicators on Human Development Index (HDI), Gross Domestic Product (GDP per capita), and renewable energy usage across 27 EU countries (2014–2023), using three panel models with relevant control variables. Applying panel unit root, cointegration tests, and Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS) estimation, results show that better health and well-being significantly promote human development, economic output, and renewable energy adoption. In Model 1, life expectancy and well-being positively influence HDI, while fertility, neonatal mortality, and traffic deaths have negative effects; income inequality mildly reduces HDI. Model 2 finds that subjective well-being and lower tuberculosis incidence boost GDP, though health effects are smaller than on HDI. Model 3 links lower teen fertility and neonatal mortality to higher renewable energy use, suggesting synergy between health progress and clean energy transition. Overall, advancing SDG3 fosters human development, economic prosperity, and environmental sustainability, highlighting the need for integrated policies that simultaneously promote health, equality, education, and clean energy.