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The 2022 edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard

Written by María Fabregat - Institutional Relations Assistant

 

This month, the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation published the 2022 edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). This Scoreboard reveals the relative strengths and shortcomings of the research and innovation systems in chosen third nations and EU Member States, as well as a comparative evaluation of their performance. It helps nations in determining where to focus their efforts on improving their innovation performance.

The EIS 2022 report is the second edition published using the new measurement framework introduced in 2021. The European Innovation Scoreboard compares every year the innovation performance of each EU country to other EU or non-EU countries. The goal is to create a database of R&D investments that businesses, investors, and policymakers can use to compare the performance of their companies with competitors around the world by benchmarking the performance of innovation industries supported by the EU against significant global counterparts. The EIS 2022 makes a distinction between 12 innovation dimensions and 32 indicators by dividing activities into four primary categories: Framework conditions, Investments, Innovation activities, and Impacts.

This year’s EIS edition shows that since 2015, innovation practically every Member State and the EU as a whole have shown an increase in innovation performance (by about 10%). The countries with the largest performance improvements areCyprus, Estonia, and Greece. Two of the EU's Emerging Innovators, Croatia and Poland, have seen an acceleration in their innovation performance. However, eight Member States—Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, and Romania—have seen a fall in their innovation performance when compared to 2021, with Estonia seeing the worst decline (-8.9%-points).

Based on their scores, EU countries are divided into four performance categories: Innovation leaders, Strong innovators, Moderate innovators and Emerging innovators. 

  • Sweden continues to be the best performer in the EU. Other Innovation Leaders are Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
  • Ireland, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany, Cyprus, and France are Strong innovators, performing above the EU average.
  • Estonia, Slovenia, Czechia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Lithuania, and, Greece are Moderate innovators. According to EIS, in 2022 the performance gap between Italy and the EU is closing, performing at 91.6% of the EU average with an improvement in performance by 17.4%-points at a rate higher than the EU (9.9% points).
  • Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania are Emerging Innovators.

 

At the international level, the EU has surpassed Japan and somewhat narrowed the performance gap with several of its rivals. In terms of performance, the EU outperforms Brazil, Chile, China, India, Japan, Mexico and South Africa, and a performance gap with Australia, Canada, South Korea and the United States.

More information 

With the new European Innovation Agenda, the aim is to close the gap between EU countries and position Europe at the forefront of the new wave of deep-tech innovations. Thus, this Scoreboard could be a new paradigm for EU nations to collaborate in the present and future, exchanging knowledge between countries with different scores and categories while improving their R&D strategies.

You can find more information about the 2022 European Innovation Scoreboard here and its EIS interactive tool here, whichenables customised comparisons of performance scores and visualise country profiles, comparing, and testing correlations between indicators.