EU innovation performance continues to improve in spite of challenges

22 Sep 2022 04:43 PM

The Commission yesterday published the 2022 edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard, which reveals that the EU's innovation performance has grown by about 10% since 2015. Compared to 2021, innovation performance in 2022 has improved for 19 Member States, and declined for eight. Compared to the EU average, global competitors such as Australia, Canada, Republic of Korea, and the United States continue having a performance advantage over the EU. Nevertheless, the EU has closed its performance gap with these nations and has surpassed Japan since 2021.

Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, yesterday said:

“Europe's commitment to innovation is shown by its continuous improvement in innovation performance. In support of Europe's innovation capacity, Horizon Europe promotes excellence and supports top researchers and innovators to drive the systemic changes needed to ensure a green, healthy and resilient Europe. The European Innovation Scoreboard 2022 demonstrates the importance of establishing a pan-European Innovation Ecosystem. The recently adopted New European Innovation Agenda will position Europe at the forefront of the new wave of deep-tech innovations and ensure that innovation reaches all regions of Europe, including rural areas.”

Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market, yesterday said:

“Europe's autonomy and competitiveness will depend on our capacity to become a technological and commercial leader in strategic areas such as space, defence, hydrogen, batteries, chips quantum and high performance computing. Europe's innovation agenda, our support to start-ups and innovative SMEs, industrial alliances or IPCEIs are already leading to highly innovative projects across Europe. This is how we translate our scientific excellence into technological and industrial leadership, and quality jobs in Europe."

Key Findings

Based on their scores, Members States fall into four performance groups: Innovation leaders (performance is above 125% of the EU average), Strong innovators (between 100% and 125% of the EU average), Moderate innovators (between 70% and 100% of the EU average) and Emerging innovators (below 70% of the EU average). Sweden continues to be the best performer in the EU. Other Innovation Leaders are Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland.