The EU has made substantial progress in its innovation performance preceding the financial crisis, as it has been shown in the 2008 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) that was published on Thursday.
According to a press release, strong progress by many new Member States such as Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria helped reduce the relative innovation gap with the US and Japan.
Cyprus is a growth leader among the group of Moderate innovator countries, with an innovation performance just below the EU27 average and a rapid rate of improvement. Relative strengths, compared to the country’s average performance, are in Finance and support, Linkages & entrepreneurship and Innovators.
Across the EU, particular progress was made in human resources and availability of finance for innovation. However, innovative investments by businesses are still relatively weak especially when compared to the US and Japan
Gunter Verheugen, Commissioner responsible for enterprise and industry policy and Vice President of the Commission, and Janez Potocnik, the Research Commissioner, stressed that in a time of crisis, it is not the moment to take a break in research investments and in innovation. They are vital if Europe wants to emerge stronger from the economic crisis and if it wants to address the challenges of climate change and globalisation.
Noting however that there is still work to be done, especially on the relative underinvestment by business, they pointed out that “the Commission's initiatives to improve the EU's research efficiency, to stimulate innovation and to develop high tech markets are putting the EU on the right tracks''
The report shows that European countries form four groupings at different levels of performance, and that virtually all countries have improved their performance although the rate of progress varies: Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Denmark and the UK are innovation leaders, with innovation performance well above the EU average. Of these countries, Switzerland and Germany are improving their performance fastest.
Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, France and the Netherlands are innovation followers, with performance above the EU average. Ireland's performance has been increasing fastest within this group, followed by Austria.
Cyprus, Iceland, Estonia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy are the moderate innovators, with innovation performance below the EU average. The trend in Cyprus' innovation performance is well above the average for this group, followed by Portugal.
Finally, Malta, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Croatia, Romania, Latvia, Bulgaria and Turkey are the catching-up countries with innovation performance well below the EU average. Most of these countries have been catching up. Bulgaria and Romania have been improving their performance the fastest.
