Latest picture of Europe’s innovation mobility is more like a still life

16 Jul 2024 | News

The 2024 European Innovation Scoreboard adds up to little progress: in the past 8 years most countries stayed in the same category

European Innovation Scoreboard 2024 interactive map. Photo credits: European Union

A few things have remained unchanged in Europe between 2017 and now: Hungary’s prime minister, France’s president, and the innovation standing of 33 of the 39 countries in the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS).

This is the finding of a Science|Business analysis of the scoreboard from 2017 to 2024. The 27 member states, plus neighbouring countries are divided into four categories: innovation leaders, strong innovators, moderate innovators, and emerging innovators. In the past eight years, 84% of the countries remained in the same category as the first year they were included in the dataset.

That means 14 of the 2017 emerging innovator countries are still emerging, with only Greece and Hungary moving up. Estonia and Cyprus made it out of the moderate class to join the strong innovator group. Two…