Despite challenges EU innovation performance continues to improve

The Commission has 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.

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.

In comparison to last year’s edition, three countries have changed performance groups. The Netherlands has become an Innovation Leader, Cyprus a Strong Innovator and Estonia a Moderate Innovator.

The Czech Republic is Moderate innovators.

The report covers the EU Member States and several other countries in Europe and around the world. Compared to the previous years, this year’s edition included three additional countries, namely Albania, Chile and Mexico.

The full report is available HERE.