The 2021 edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard, published on Monday 21 June by the European Commission, shows progress, especially in some of the countries that have performed less well.
The average performance of countries designated as “moderate” innovators thus improved by 16 percentage points compared to 2014, which is the largest increase of any group. Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Italy and Lithuania, in particular, show an improvement in performance of 25 percentage points or more.
The performance gap between the “moderates” and the most innovative countries has therefore narrowed considerably. Among the most innovative, Sweden is in the lead, followed by Finland, Denmark and Belgium. And all of them have an innovation performance well above the EU average.
On the other hand, the performance gap has widened between the “moderates” and the “emerging” innovators (Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland in particular).
More broadly, average European innovation performance has increased by 12.5% since 2014. However, the EU still underperforms compared to Japan, the US, Australia, Canada and the most innovative country, South Korea, which scores 21% higher than the EU. On the other hand, the EU is ahead of China, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and India.
See the table: https://bit.ly/3zKRACz (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)