Sustainability has become a global trend that is theoretically sought by all sectors and countries. This research presents the current progress towards the development and validation of the methodology of bioeconomy sustainability index to characterize and compare the degree of bioeconomy efficiency at national level as well as identify the bioeconomy development weak-spots that need to be strengthened. The methodology is based on the classical three pillars of sustainability (environmental, social and economic), which include factors characterizing the development of the bioeconomy expressed as indicators and further construction of composite index is proposed. The seven selected bioeconomy related indicators include biotechnology patent share, bioeconomy labour productivity, the added value of bioeconomy sectors attributed to its turnover, bioeconomy employment location quotient, development of environment related technologies, government support to research and development in agriculture sector, and biomass use location quotient. The results of the proposed bioeconomy efficiency index for EU28 countries are presented. The bioeconomy efficiency index can be further used as a measurement tool for assessment of the bioeconomy development prognosis and also for scenario analysis by searching for optimal indicator values in order to promote bioeconomy development.