Although the majority of member states continue to lag behind the US and Japan in terms of innovation performance, the gap is closing steadily, thanks to the rapid growth in the innovative activities of a number of EU countries, such as Slovenia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Portugal, Poland, Latvia, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria.
The main progress is due to the growing number of science and engineer graduates, a greater use of trademarks and designs and increased employment in medium- and high-tech industries.
The ranking stems from the 2006 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), published on 22 February 2007, which aims to evaluate and compare the innovation performance of EU member states. Innovation is a key pillar of the Commission's Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs.
The study – which includes a wide range of indicators, including public R&D budgets, investment in information and communication technologies, volumes of high-tech exports and credit conditions for start-up businesses – labels Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Japan as the world leaders in terms of innovation. But the US, UK, Iceland, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Ireland are close behind.
Conversely, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Malta, Hungary, Croatia and Slovakia appear to be stagnating, with scores well below those of the innovation leaders and below or equal to average performance growth.
Key areas in which Europe continues to under-perform include investment in ICT and spending on research and development. Broadband penetration rates in the EU remain well below those of Japan and the US, and business investments in R&D stand at just 1.2% of GDP in Europe against 1.9% in the US and 2.4% in Japan.
The study says that the EU is also lagging behind in access to tertiary education (which incorporates less than one quarter of the population in Europe against 37% in Japan and 38% in US), its number of patents and early-stage venture-capital availability.
