The sustainable development and energy security are currently the priority challenges for the European Union countries. The sustainable and stable development of European economies is closely dependent on the stable access to energy resources. The constant increase of the demand for electricity requires long-term planning of the common European policy. The aim of the article is to analyse the fuel and energy resources situation of the member states with regard to their energy balances and with the determination of their import dependence in relation to fossil fuels, such as: coal, oil and natural gas. Based on the collected statistical data the analysis of clusters was presented in order to separate homogenous subsets, that is groups of the European Union Member States. The squared Euclidean distance has been adopted as the measure of similarities of the member states in the clusters, and the k-means algorithm has been used as the method of grouping. As a result of the analysis seven clusters were selected-groups of homogenous countries in terms of the import dependence due to the major energy resources (oil, natural gas and coal). The results of the paper can constitute bases for shaping the appropriate long-term common energy policy for the listed potential groups of countries. Statistical data were collected based on the Eurostat publication.

a b s t r a c tGreenhouse gas emissions are a global problem. Although the EU countries from 1990 to 2012 reduced their total emissions by 19.2% (CO 2 eq.), it is still necessary to limit their emissions. In the article the possibility of using the taxonomic methods that allow grouping (classifying) objects described by many attributes (variables) is presented. In particular, cluster analysis was used, in which some methods for the isolation of homogeneous subsets of surveyed objects can be distinguished. One of such method is kmeans algorithm. As a measure of similarity of objects in clusters the Euclidean distance was applied. In the analysis 28 European countries were taken as objects of research and they were described by four attributes (variables), i.e. the emission levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and nitrous oxide. The aim of the analysis is to grouping objects e the European countries e into clusters that are most similar to each other in the same cluster and most unlike in other clusters. The research was carried out according to total greenhouse gas emissions, and according to emissions of these gases per capita of the countries surveyed. The analyses are based on Eurostat reports.

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In the original publication, the given name and family name of the author was swapped and the author's private address was included in the affiliation by mistake. The correct name and the affiliation is given in this erratum.

The economic development of the EU’s countries depends on stable and permanent access to various energy sources. The integration of European energy markets is a long-term process. Each member country has a different energy balance, energy resources and electricity generation technologies. Therefore, comparing Member States with one another is a complex task. The article deals with organizing the set of objects in multidimensional spaces of variables from the point of view of a certain characteristics that cannot be measured in a simple way, i.e., the relative level of the development of energy markets. The following diagnostic variables were adopted for the analysis: consumption of electric energy generated from renewables per capita (TWH/person), hard coal consumption (million tons/person), greenhouse gas emissions per capita, available for final consumption gigawatt-hour per person, final energy consumption thousand tons of oil equivalent (TOE) per person, petroleum available for final consumption (gigawatt-hour), natural gas (terajoule gross calorific value-GCV) per person, energy intensity of GDP (kilograms of oil equivalent (KGOE) per thousand euro, import dependency %. The article draws upon the cluster analysis, which uses the methods and techniques that enable to extract such objects (countries) from the data set, which would be similar to each other and combine them into groups. The purpose of the article is to examine and discus the diversity of Member States on the level of development of energy markets taking into account the specific situation of Poland. The presented model has the potential to be used at the level of enterprises from various industries to evaluate the level of sustainable development. The algorithm modification will only require the selection of available diagnostic variables describing the given enterprise.