The Commission’s latest annual European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), published today, shows that the EU’s weaker performers are failing to close the gap on better performing countries.
The EIS breaks countries down into four categories, emerging innovators, moderate innovators, strong innovators and innovation leaders. The emerging innovators category includes Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia and Croatia. According to the report they are failing to make ground on the moderate innovators.
The gap is narrowing further up the scale though, with performance levels closing among the moderate and strong innovators.
Overall, EU countries are rated as being 0.6 percentage points more innovative this year than in 2022, and 8.5 percentage points more innovative than in 2016.
A notable change this year is Hungary’s inclusion in the moderate innovators category, which has moved up the rankings mainly due to improvements in areas such as foreign doctorate students and broadband penetration.
The Commission today also published its Regional Innovation Scoreboard, which comes out every two years.
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