Sustainable development theory is formed around its major task of balancing the performances of economic, social and environmental sectors. The main aim of this integrative process is to offer consistent and healthy national progress. Besides the theory and the recommendations (abundant in the academic literature, but also in the political discourse) based on its main dimensions, the reality apparently reveals an irregular evolution of the economic, social and environment sectors' results. Observation of this evolution may represent a support for both mainstream sustainable

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The actual development challenges impose new criteria of national performance evaluation, the concept of wellbeing tending to be measured not just in terms of economic and social dimensions, but also vs. the environment. Accordingly, considering the national environmental performance among the EU countries in 2006–2019 period, we grouped them and concentrated on the clusters registering the highest and lowest levels, analyzing how the components of the human and economic dimensions influence it. Applying panel data models, our main results emphasized that, firstly, for the countries with a better environmental performance, sufficient drinking water, safe sanitation, education, gender equality, and good governance were significant; in the countries with the lowest levels of environmental wellbeing, sufficient food, sufficient to drink, education, and income distribution were insignificant, while the remaining components were relevant. Secondly, in both groups of countries, organic farming and public debt were significant; nevertheless, differences were observed for genuine savings and employment, for which the peculiarities of economic activities seemed to be materialized as different influences upon environmental wellbeing. Our study draws alarm signals regarding the development patterns applied in the EU, seeming to have results that strengthen the sustainable goals, but not sufficient for exceeding the traditional growth-oriented model.

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