The convergence of innovation performance across the EU is continuing apace, while five Member States have retained their positions as world innovation leaders, according to the 2007 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS).

This is the seventh edition of the report, which was launched in 2001 as part of the Lisbon Strategy to compare the innovation performance of the EU's Member States. The scoreboard also contains information on Turkey, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the US and Japan.

Although Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom occupy top positions as world innovation leaders, the report finds that the large majority of other Member States have some catching up to do if they are to join their peers.

Meanwhile, three new EU members, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, are progressing well up the innovation ladder and are on track to reach the EU average innovation performance within a decade.

The EU is however losing ground to the US, the world's global innovation leader, as it increases its lead in high-tech exports and public investment in research and development (R&D). The US succeeded in retaining its lead over the EU in 11 out of 15 innovation indicators, including enrolment in tertiary education, public and private R&D expenditure and the number of patents registered. The study also reveals that Japan remains ahead of the EU in all of these areas.

'The continued improvement in innovation performance across the EU is very encouraging and offers further evidence that the Lisbon process and the broad-based innovation strategy are working,' said Commission Vice President Günter Verheugen.

'But the apparent slowdown in catching up with the US and in particular the increasing gap in public research and development show that reinforced efforts are needed if we are to create more world class innovation in Europe,' he added.

For the first time, the report also assesses innovation efficiency and finds that most EU countries are still failing to transform knowledge inputs into actual intellectual property outputs. It goes on to state that recent European initiatives, such as the Lead Markets Initiative to stimulate demand for innovative goods and services, could boost innovation in the EU.

The 25 individual indicators used in the EIS report are classified in five categories in order to better capture the various aspects of the innovation process. They are as follows: innovation drivers such as the number of science and engineering graduates; knowledge creation including business R&D expenditure; innovation and entrepreneurship; applications; and intellectual property.