The European Commission published the 2009 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS)

The European Commission published the 2009 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) on  March 17. The EIS provides a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of the EU Member States.

Most EU Member States until 2008 were steadily improving their innovation performance. The economic crisis may, however, be hampering this progress, according to the 2009 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). Early indications show that the worst hit are Member States with lower levels of innovation performance, potentially reversing the convergence process witnessed over recent years. Meanwhile, the latest statistics show that the EU is having difficulty in catching up with the US in innovation performance, although it maintains a clear lead over the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, despite rapid improvements in China.

"This scoreboard provides invaluable evidence on trends in innovation performance. The overall picture is positive, there are however some worrying signs and we will have to take this very seriously in developing the measures to accomplish what we just laid out in our Europe 2020 strategy. Increasing investment in research and innovation is the key to moving from crisis to sustainable prosperity. That is why the Commission is maintaining the 3% of GDP target for R&D investment in Europe and proposing realistic national targets with robust monitoring.” emphasised Vice-President Antonio Tajani, Commissioner for Entrepreneurship and Industry, and Research Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who is leading a cross-cutting approach to innovation in the new Commission.

The EIS 2009 includes 29 innovation-related indicators with publicly available data from 2007/2008 and trend analyses for the EU27 Member States, as well as for Croatia, Serbia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The 29 indicators are grouped around three categories: enablers (human resources, finance and support), firm activities (firm investments, linkages & entrepreneurship, throughputs) and outputs (innovators, economic effects). It does not capture yet the full effects of the recent economic and financial crises.


EU27 Member States fall into the following four country groups:

As in previous years, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and the UK are the Innovation leaders. However, of these countries, Germany and Finland are improving their performance the fastest while Denmark and the UK are stagnating.

Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Slovenia are the Innovation followers. Since 2008, Cyprus, Estonia and Slovenia have progressed into this group due to steady improvement over recent years.

Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain are the Moderate innovators.

Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania are the Catching-up countries with innovation performance significantly below the EU27 average. However, all three countries are rapidly closing their gap to the average performance level of the EU27, and Bulgaria and Romania have been improving their performance the fastest of all Member States.

The full reports are available at
http://www.proinno-europe.eu/metrics

For individual summaries of the innovation performance of all 27 Member States see MEMO/10/82.