European Innovation Scoreboard and Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2021

On 21 June 2021, the European Commission (DG GROW/R&I) published the 2021 edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) and its regional version Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS).

As the corresponding press release states “The Commission has today released the  European Innovation Scoreboard 2021, which shows that Europe's innovation performance continues to improve across the EU. On average, innovation performance has increased by 12.5% since 2014. There is continued convergence within the EU, with lower performing countries growing faster than higher performing ones, therefore closing the innovation gap among them. According to the 2021 Regional Innovation Scoreboard also published today, this trend applies to innovation across EU regions.”

This year's European Innovation Scoreboard is based on a revised framework, which includes new indicators on digitalisation and environmental sustainability, bringing the scoreboard more in line with the EU political priorities. Therefore, results should not be compared with previous editions of the report.

Sweden continues to be the  EU Innovation Leader, followed by Finland, Denmark and Belgium, all with innovation performance well above the EU average.  Between 2014 and 2021, innovation performance has increased in all EU Member States and it has increased the most in Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Italy and Lithuania.

Performance of EU Member innovation systems

At the global level, South Korea is the most innovative country, followed by Canada and Australia. The EU is also lagging behind Japan and the United States, but ahead of China, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, and India in this year's EIS.

In the benchmarking against other European and neighbouring countries Switzerland came out as the overall Innovation leader in Europe, outperforming all EU Member States, while Ukraine shows the lowest performance of all countries assessed.

Looking at the regional level, innovation performance has increased for 225 regions out of the total of 240 regions over the period since 2014. There has been a process of convergence in regional performance over time, with decreasing performance differences between regions.

The most innovative region in Europe is Stockholm in Sweden, followed by Helsinki-Uusimaa in Finland, and Oberbayern in Germany. Hovedstaden in Denmark is in fourth place, and Zürich in Switzerland is in fifth place.

Regional innovation performance

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