Innovation Scoreboard: EU innovation good but not great

Innovation performance continues to intensify in the EU thanks to progress made by its Member States but we continue to lag behind Japan and the US, the first edition of the new Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) says. The EU must start plugging its innovation holes in order to catch up with the global competition and maintain any leads we have over other competitors including Brazil, China, India and Russia. However, while the EU-27 continues to outperform India and Russia, the group is feeling the heat from Brazil and China as the latter two are hot on the EU's heels.

Intensifying these efforts will effectively facilitate the use of innovation results and give the private sector a major boost, the report highlights. Under the Innovation Union initiative, which targets making the private sector stronger and bringing ideas to market, the 2010 IUS will help Member States bolster their innovation performance and identify strengths and weaknesses.

The IUS was compiled on the basis of 25 research and innovation-related indicators and covers all 27 EU Member States, plus Croatia, Serbia, Turkey, Iceland, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Norway and Switzerland. It replaces the former European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS).

The EU's top innovation performers are clustered in the Nordic region, with Sweden in the lead, followed by Denmark and Finland rounding out the top three. Germany ranks fourth, followed by the UK, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, France, Cyprus, Slovenia and Estonia, in that order.

Europe's moderate innovators are Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain. Their performances are below the EU-27 average.

It should be noted that all 27 Member States have outpaced the US in two key areas: knowledge-intensive services exports and public research and development (R&D) expenditure. The IUS report points out that European research systems, characterised as being open and excellent, and intellectual assets, like trademarks and designs, are responsible for fuelling the biggest growth of all the EU-27 innovation indicators.

According to the IUS, the biggest gap the EU must deal with is the 'Firm activities' category. Falling short in terms of public-private co-publications and business R&D expenditures, the EU must establish regulatory and other framework conditions that will help bolster private sector investment and enable the business sector to exploit research results effectively. The latter is particularly important for ensuring an efficient patent system.

The EU must also work on bridging the gap that exists in licence and patent revenues from abroad. The IUS notes this area is instrumental in fostering changes in an economic system over time, with special emphasis placed on the behaviour of businesses, markets and the general economy.

'The Scoreboard shows that we need to step up our efforts in making Europe more innovative in order to catch up with our main competitors and recover that path of robust and sustainable growth,' underlines European Commission Vice-President and Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship Antonio Tajani.

For her part, Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn reiterated how crucial a role innovation plays in building and sustaining a fruitful modern economy. 'It is at the core of economic policymaking and the main way economies create jobs,' she emphasises. 'So today's Scoreboard is a central plank of the Europe 2020. We want Member States to make full use of it to build on their strengths and to address weaknesses.'

Europe 2020 is the EU's growth strategy that targets a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. Obtaining this within the next nine years will ultimately deliver high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion in the EU and its Member States.