Scoreboard reveals EU innovation ‘key to growth’
Improving Europe’s capacity to innovate and be globally competitive requires further efforts to encourage disruptive ideas and foster their commercial up-take, according to the latest ranking of innovation performance across Europe.
The European Commission’s Innovation Union Scoreboard 2015 reveals that the EU’s overall level of innovation has remained stable. However, the economic crisis has left an impact on the private sector’s innovative activity: the number of innovative firms is in decline, as are SMEs’ innovations, patent applications, exports of high-tech products, venture capital investments and sales of innovative products. While there have been improvements in human resources, business investments in research and development and the quality of science, these are not enough to result in a stronger innovation performance.
In the overall ranking, Sweden is once again the innovation leader, followed by Denmark, Finland and Germany. The fastest growing innovators are Malta, Latvia and Bulgaria, Ireland, the UK and Poland. Globally, the EU continues to be outperformed by the US, Japan and South Korea.
Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Carlos Moedas said: “We need more investments to boost the EU’s innovation performance. This should go hand in hand with better conditions and a single market for innovative products and services in Europe. We are working on this at EU level and stand ready to help member states implement the reforms to enhance the impact of their public investments.”
The European Fund for Strategic Investments is set to be vital for research and innovation, in particular to restore venture financing to its pre-crisis levels. In addition, through the Capital Markets Union, the Commission aims to further improve access to finance for businesses, and in particular SMEs.
The innovation scoreboard also said that strengthening the synergies between the EU’s research funding programme Horizon 2020 and Structural Funds will also play an important role in stimulating investment levels.
