Abstract
Globalization is one of the key challenges facing peripheral regions in Europe, bringing significant social, economic, cultural and political changes. Understanding the divergence between different regions of Europe, and between Europe and the rest of the world, implies considerable challenges, both in terms of quantification and analysis. The assessment of sustainability of economic system based on comparative analysis and growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) accepted by mainstream thinking of political system, does not reflect the objective reality. Comparative analyses of socio – economic structure have underlined the diversity in configurations and complexity level of knowledge and industrial production networks across the European Union (EU). The aim of this work is to analyze the sustainability and dynamics of economic development in North, South and East European countries, analyzing the selected countries production systems complexity trends during the last 10 years. The quantitative analysis of socio – economic systems complexity was carried out by modeling the landscape of countries production systems and calculating fractal dimension of the systems. As a result the fractal dimension of Sweden, Greece and Lithuania has been calculated, assessed and compared to productive part of total economy. The modeling results demonstrate the substantial differences in the assessment of countries sustainability trends, based on GDP from the one hand and production system complexity, based on fractal dimension on the other hand. The fractal dimension of socio – economic system produces a more realistic status and trends of the system sustainability and competitiveness.