A Multicriteria Approach for Assessing the Impact of ICT on EU Sustainable Regional Policy
As a global actor, the European Union (EU) plays a leading role in international efforts to promote sustainable development globally. All sustainable objectives and targets need Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as key catalysts, since ICTs constitute tools of unprecedented power which help people to face the growing challenges of rising population, poverty, epidemics and climate change. Policy makers in the EU are increasingly putting ICTs into relations with sustainable regional development. This paper aims to study and assess the impact of ICT on the EU regional policy in terms of sustainable development by applying the multicriteria approach, PROMETHEE II, using the software Visual PROMETHEE. The criteria that were used in this research are the criteria that both the European Commission and member states define to assess the ICT implications of new EU legislation since 2010. The results revealed that the impact of ICT on EU sustainable regional policy has gotten stronger in the last two decades.