Measuring Sustainability in Economic Output in Member States That Joined the European Union in 2004

The purpose of the research is to examine which areas are possible to develop based on the indicators of economic growth for the sake of sustainability, which is becoming increasingly important nowadays. The practical benefit of the results can form the basis for the development of proposals that can help individual member states to achieve their sustainability goals. The study covers the European Union (EU), analyzing on the one hand all member states (EU27) and examining the 10 member states that joined in 2004 (EU10) as a separate group. This group has been part of the EU member states for nearly twenty years, so it was worthwhile to examine to what extent it was possible to reduce their lag at the time of accession. The research examines one of the internationally used indicators of sustainability, resource productivity (RP). Researches the economic processes and indicators that influence the performance in RP. Based on the results, there is still a significant difference between the EU27 and the EU10. However, these are no longer of a scientific and technical nature, but rather reflect a difference in approach.