European innovation scoreboard 2023

The European Innovation Scoreboard provides a comparative assessment of the Research and Innovation performance of EU Member States, other European countries, and regional neighbours. It helps countries assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of their national innovation systems and identify challenges that they need to address. 

Based on their scores, EU countries fall into four performance groups: Innovation leaders, Strong innovators, Moderate innovators and Emerging innovators. 

• Denmark is the new top innovator with the best performance in the EU, overtaking Sweden after a few years in leading position. Other Innovation Leaders are Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
• Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, Cyprus, and France are Strong innovators, performing above the EU average.
• Estonia, Slovenia, Czechia, Italy, Spain, Malta, Portugal, Lithuania, Greece and Hungary are Moderate innovators.
• Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania are Emerging Innovators.

In the latest edition, the distribution of Member States across performance groups in the European Innovation Scoreboard remains largely unchanged compared to the previous year. However, Hungary has made significant strides and advanced to a higher performance group, earning the title of Moderate Innovator, while France and Luxembourg experienced a slight decrease in performance relative to the EU eight years ago. This highlights the need for continued efforts to enhance innovation capabilities in these regions.

Between 2016 and 2023, performance differences between the Member States have narrowed, most strongly within the groups of Strong Innovators and Moderate Innovators. However, the distribution of performance groups still exhibits geographic concentration. Northern and Western Europe are home to the Innovation Leaders and most Strong Innovators, while Southern and Eastern Europe house the majority of Moderate and Emerging Innovators.

Since last year, the global positioning of the EU has not significantly changed. The EU has closed part of its performance gap with Australia. China’s performance level is almost at par with that of the EU

This year’s European Innovation Scoreboard is based which consists of 32 indicators grouped under 12 dimensions.