Gross domestic product
Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a period of time, often annually 
GDP (nominal) per capita does not, however, reflect differences in the cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries; therefore using a basis of GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) is arguably more useful when comparing differences in living standards between nations.
System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting
The high level conference "Beyond GDP" in November 2007 at which Commissioner Dimas concluded that "we [The European Commission] will also need to speed up and improve the development of integrated accounting in the social and environmental spheres" increased the interest for SEEA (please consult the official web-site of Beyond GDP at http://www.beyond-gdp.eu/). The idea of Beyond GDP is to increase the use of indicators related to environment and social aspects in relation to indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) "...to address global challenges such as climate change, poverty, resource depletion and health" (Beyond GDP web-site). In 2009 the European Commission issued a communication "GDP and beyond Measuring progress in a changing world" describing the need to complement economic indicators such as the GDP with social and environmental indicators. According to this communication, the European Commission plans to extend the existing data collection further, ready for policy analysis by 2013.