The article highlights the potential of brownfield areas in the sense of the rules and principles of sustainable development of the regions which shows significant disparities determined by the developmental tendencies of the socio-economic and environmental spheres, whose interactions were its basic platform in the Slovak Republic in the last years. Brownfield areas, with a degree of degradation and environmental quality depending on their type and original use, have a negative impact on all mentioned spheres of regional development, since such sites are unused and represent so-called brown investments, i.e. areas from which the region has no benefit. From the explicitly defined positive and negative determinants of the actual occurrence of brownfield areas in terms of sustainable development of the regions, the article quantifies their prioritization in the process of implementation into the regional development model, accepting the principles of Saaty matrix which is objective from a process perspective of sustainable regional development. Based on the explicit quantification of the above-mentioned determinants, the categorization of brownfield areas in the process of sustainable regional development, including the model of regional development with implemented brownfield sites, whose actual occurrence supports the occurrence of diversified activities, reduces the price of the surrounding land and ultimately threatens the health of the affected population and reduces the price of surrounding lands.

The article discusses the environmental efficiency of the countries of the European Union and its main objective is to verify models that could be used to explain changes in efficiency in selected countries and to add to the contributions of other authors. Two-step Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been used, which is a suitable method for verifying the statistical significance of environmental variables. Two DEA models—CCR and BCC—were used and efficiencies have undergone a double-bootstrap procedure. As input variables, three emission per capita indices were computed to single output GDP per capita. Three truncated regression models have been proposed. Results have shown that the model with drivers of climate change and variables connected to socio-economic factors is the most relevant and significant. There are common variables, whose improvement increases the efficiencies in all European Union countries, but there are also indices which have to be considered in individual/subgroup policies and implications, such as environmental taxes, waste management, resources productivity, and transport of goods management.

Efficiency of circular economies is one of the most important areas of the improvement of economic growth in a circular way, that is, improving worldwide GDP. The issue of circular economies, namely their efficiency, is a current topic of evidence of many literary sources in the literature. This issue is solved in the conditions of the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. The goal of the study is to compare the circular efficiency within the Visegrád Group and efficiency of Visegrád Group countries to the European Union 28 average. Data envelopment analysis slack-based models are implemented to evaluate the output efficiencies of the selected subjects. Truncated regression is used to measure the impact of selected indicators on circular efficiency. The Visegrád Group countries are not among the most advanced in terms of recycling and the use of the circular economy, which was confirmed by this research. However, developments suggest significant improvements. The significance of this research lies in several benefits. One of the benefits is the perception of regional differences and the setting of EU cluster policies at the regional level. The idea of changing inputs is very significant since the outputs are oriented to the recycling rates of materials and waste. This research has shown that a higher level of GDP does not necessarily mean a higher level of efficiency of the circular economy.

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Scientific approach in health centres management does not have a long history in Slovakia. There exist only a limited number of articles devoted to methods of efficiency evaluation. The aim of this article is to point out the options and the readiness of particular Data envelopment analysis (DEA) models in the conditions in specialized institutions in Slovakia. This article records scientific approach using the DEA method and also practical approach from the management of the chosen specialized medical institution. It evaluates the suggestibility of individual models and their influentiability factor by the management of respective health institutions. By using the DEA bootstrap method, we indicated where the possible deviations/differences from the measured values could lie.

Europe 2020 is the growth strategy of European Union for the coming decade. Education is one of the objectives of this strategy. Its fulfillment is quantified through two indicators, namely the rate of early school leavers and population with tertiary education. The aim of this paper is to analyse and assess the level of achievement of these two sub-objectives in the Member States in 2014, with the emphasis on the southern countries of the European Union as well as to estimate the the degree of fulfillment, respectively failure of the target values until the year 2020.

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