To arrive at informed opinions about the combined effects of our 26 predictor variables on the totality of the reduced list of 30 or extended list of 35 dependent variables, measuring ‘development’, we have to use multivariate or multi-dimensional index construction. As we mentioned in Chapter 3, the performances of all the countries of our investigation for all the dependent variables were standardized along a scale, ranging from 0 (worst value) to 1 (best value). The chosen variables correspond to seven different dimensions and interact with one another (see also Table 3).

Democracy

Economic growth

Environment

Gender

Human development

R&D

Social cohesion

The performance scores, calculated according to the well-known UNDP index practice, described in Chapter 3, can be now combined into a single index, based on our extended list of 35 dependent variables, or they can be first grouped into seven different dimensions, and only then added together. Such a grouping together of the performance results can be interesting, especially in order to judge whether or not the seven different policy dimensions of the presumed, measured phenomenon ‘EU-2020 policy performance’ correlate strongly and positively with one another.

In an ideal world, democracy, growth, environment, gender equality, human development, research and development and social cohesion all correlate very strongly and positively with one another. Of course, the EU decision makers assumed such neat and positive correlations at least implicitly all along the failed Lisbon Strategy from 2000 to 2010, and they committed this erroneous assumption anew for the EU-2020 process.