On 15 January 2021, Eurostat published the new results of the Community Innovation Survey. The CIS is a survey designed to provide information on the innovativeness of enterprises, on the different types of innovation and on various aspects of the development of an innovation, such as the objectives, the sources of information, the public funding and the innovation expenditures.

According to the latest results, over the three-year period 2016-2018, half (50.3%) of the enterprises in the EU with at least 10 people employed reported innovation activity, a small improvement from the previous period 2014 - 2016 (49.5%).

At Member State level, the top performers were Estonia with a share of 73.1%, followed by Cyprus with 68.2% and Belgium with 67.8%. In contrast, Romania (14.6%), Poland (23.7%) and Hungary (28.7%) were the countries with the lowest shares of innovative enterprises.

During the same period, 13.2% of all enterprises in the EU with at least 10 people employed launched one or more innovative products that were new to the market. Across the EU, this share varied between 24.8% in Finland and 2.9% in Romania. Not every innovation activity relates to innovative products that are new to the market. Innovation activities can also relate to innovative business processes or other issues (such as , still ongoing or abandoned innovation projects).

Analysing the data in terms of firm size, the share of innovative SMEs (defined as the size of enterprises between 10 and 249 employees) in the EU was 49.2% over the same period. This share was the highest in Estonia (72.5%), Cyprus (68%) and Belgium (66.7%) and the lowest in Romania (14%), Poland (22%) and Hungary (27.7%).

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