Innovation divergence between EU member states still high
Europe is closing the innovation gap with the United States and Japan but differences in performance between EU member states are still high and diminishing slowly, according to the latest Innovation Union Scoreboard.
Overall progress has been driven by the openness and attractiveness of the EU research system as well as business innovation collaboration and the commercialisation of knowledge as measured by licence and patent revenues from abroad. However, growth in public R&D expenditure was offset by a decline in venture capital investment and non-R&D innovation investment in companies.
Commenting on the report, European Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, responsible for Research, Innovation and Science, said: “The Scoreboard confirms once again that investment in research and innovation pays dividends in terms of economic performance. With a budget of nearly €80bn over the next seven years, Horizon 2020 will help us maintain this momentum. We need to increase innovation investment across the EU now to reach our target of 3% of GDP by 2020.”
At a regional level, the innovation gap is widening, with the innovation performance having deteriorated in almost one fifth of EU regions.
Adding this thoughts, European Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani, responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship, said: “Making innovation happen all over Europe remains a priority if we want to achieve our industrial policy objective: at least 20% of EU GDP coming from manufacturing by 2020. More business investment, a stronger demand for European innovative solutions and fewer obstacles to the commercial up-take of innovations are the key to growth.”
The Innovation Union Scoreboard 2014 places EU member states into four performance groups. Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden are ‘Innovation Leaders’ with innovation performance well above that of the EU average. Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovenia and the UK are ‘Innovation followers’ with innovation performance above or close to that of the EU average.
The performance of Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain is below that of the EU average, and are defined as ‘Moderate Innovators’. Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania are ‘Modest Innovators’, with innovation performance well below that of the EU average.
