Radim Lenort*, Joanna Baran**, Marcin Wysokiński**, Piotr Gołasa**, Wioletta Bieńkowska-Gołasa**, Magdalena Golonko**, Norbert Chamier-Gliszczyński***
*SKODA AUTO University, Czech Republic; **Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland; ***Koszalin University of Technology, Poland
corresponding author’s e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract
Based on the Data Envelopment Analysis method and the Malmquist Productivity Index, the article specifies the economic and environmental efficiency and its changes in the chemical industry in individual EU countries from 2010 to 2016. The following have been adopted as variables in the model: 1 output (production value) and 3 types of input (num-ber of employees, energy consumption, CO2 emissions). The countries where the chemical sector obtained the highest economic and environmental efficiency were: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, France, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, and Austria. The chemical industry in Romania and Bulgaria proved to be the least economically and envi-ronmentally efficient. As part of the research, it was indicated that both technological progress and the change in tech-nical efficiency had impact on the improvement in productivity in the chemical industry in EU. In the analysed period, the chemical industry in Europe improved its annual productivity by 5%. It is worth noting that the improvement was still decreasing in the analysed period: from 16% in 2010/2011 to -2% in 2015/2016. The conducted analyses make it possi-ble to state that, in the period 2010/2011-2012/2013, technological progress had a greater impact on improving the chem-ical industry's productivity. In turn, the technical efficiency had a greater impact on improving the chemical industry's productivity in the period 2013/2014-2014/2015. The decline in productivity in 2015/2016 was due to a decline in both indicators. However, the situation of the chemical industry varies depending on the country. Research results indicate that in 2010-2016 the chemical industry improved its productivity in 20 European countries. Countries that experienced slowdown in the chemical industry's productivity are France, Cyprus, Lithuania, Slovakia, and United Kingdom. In Ger-many and Luxembourg, on the other hand, neither improvement, nor deterioration in the productivity of the chemical industry has been observed.

Keywords 
efficiency, environment, chemical industry, Europe

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