Abstract:

Eco-innovation and green technologies are the key to Europe´s future and they are at the heart of the European Union (EU) policies. As the numerous practical examples demonstrate, eco-innovation is a powerful instrument that combines reduced negative impact on the environment and the positive impact on the economy and society. Eco-innovations call attention to the positive contribution to the sustainable development and a competitive economy. To step towards the sustainable economic growth, there is a need for much more eco-innovation.   Emphasizing eco-innovation as a means for achieving sustainable development requires information on the performance of main actors, in particular, countries. Measuring country´s performance of eco-innovation has started via indices or scoreboards, which come with indicators and scores and help with benchmarks across countries. Policy and innovation actors can thus learn about diagnosing different areas of eco-innovation, monitoring trends and directions and drawing lessons about the strengths and weaknesses across countries. The aim of this paper is to assess the eco-innovation performance during the last three years in Slovakia by means of eco-innovation index, to analyse and assess the components and indicators of eco-innovation index for Slovakia in the year 2018 and to compare them with those of EU 28–average. Identified and discussed will be the areas in which the main weaknesses and strengths are evident. Based on the research results formulated will be the main implications for managers and policy makers in Slovakia to improve the state in mentioned area. Our study is qualitative and descriptive in nature and is based on secondary sources of data coming from the Eurostat and Eco-Innovation Observatory. The methods used in the paper are the method of casual analysis, deduction, abstraction, comparison as well as the synthesis.