Brussels, 13/01/2006 (Agence Europe) - The fifth edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) reveals that Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and, outside the Union, Switzerland, are European innovation leaders. Also, although most of the new EU Member States are engaged in the catching-up process, their slow progress is unlikely to allow for short-term convergence in Europe. In addition, should trends for the 25 Member States continue, the innovation gap between Europe and the US will not be bridged. Speaking to the press on Thursday, David White, Director at DG Enterprise, said that, if Europe wants to achieve its growth and employment goals, it must be successful when it comes to innovation. He added that, despite some satisfaction, the Union is still far from being as innovative as it could be. He went on to warn that, if current trends are confirmed, the gap between Europe and the US will not close.
With the aid of 26 indicators ranging from the number of persons qualified in science subjects to research and development spending and the number of patents per inhabitant and exports of high-tech products, the EIS analyses innovation trends in the 25 EU Member States as well as in Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the United States and Japan. These 26 indicators are broken down into 5 groups representing the key aspects of innovation. On one hand, there are innovation drivers, knowledge creation, innovation and entreprenurship (“inputs”), and, on the other, applications and intellectual property (“outputs”). Also, the EIS proposes a new assessment of the effectiveness of innovation and develops a sector-specific approach. Providing an overall view of innovation performance in Europe, the 5th EIS highlights significant national differences, placing the European countries in four different groups. Although Germany, the Scandinavian countries of the Union and Switzerland are in the group of “leading countries”, the new Member States - Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus and Malta - are “catching up countries”; or “losing ground countries” - Estonia, Poland and Slovakia. Most of the “old” EU15 Member States, with Iceland, are placed in an intermediary group of “average performance countries”. We would point out, however, that, with a weak and worrying innovative situation, Portugal is still in the catching up phase whereas, surprisingly, Spain is at the bottom of the list of countries losing ground in terms of innovation, alongside three candidate countries (Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey). Furthermore, the Commission predicts that, among the countries that are below the European average, only Hungary, Slovenia and Italy will catch up within 20 years if they continue their efforts in innovation at their current pace. For the other countries concerned, this process could take over 50 years. “This means that Europe could take over fifty years to reach the American level of innovation”, Mr White stressed. Such a statement of fact is far from the objectives set out in the Lisbon Strategy, whose ambition in 2000 was to make the Union the most competitive economy in the world. The fifth EIS in fact shows that the United States and Japan were still far ahead of the Union in 2005. Nonetheless, although the gap between Japan and the Union grew wider from 2994 to 2005, that existing between the Union and the United States stabilised over the same period (although Community research investment remains almost one third below that of the United States). In parallel, emergent countries such as China and India are rapidly becoming research and innovation centres par excellence.
Finally, for the very first time, the EIS has perfected an input/output approach allowing assessment of the way countries exploit their innovative factors. In this context, the 5th EIS reveals that Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland and Malta are countries that have the best performances when it comes to outputs: meaning that they successfully transform their assets into innovation success. Iceland, Estonia, Lithuania, Cyprus and Norway are examples of countries whose performances in terms of output are far below those observed in terms of input. One possible explanation for these differences might be the receptiveness of a country's population to new products and services, as measured in the latest Commission barometer on innovation (Innobarometer 2004, EUROPE 8863).
For further information: http://www.trendchart.org