(17 June 2019) – The European Commission’s 2019 European Innovation Scoreboard and Regional Innovation Scoreboard published today show that the EU’s innovation performance has been improving for four years in a row.
For the first time ever, Europe’s innovation outperforms that of the United States. However, the EU continues to lose some ground to Japan and South Korea, and China is catching up fast.
Sweden is the 2019 EU innovation leader, followed by Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands. The United Kingdom and Luxembourg dropped from the top rank of innovation leader status to the strong innovators group, while Estonia joins the strong innovators group for the first time.
The most innovative regions in the EU are Helsinki-Uusimaa, Finland followed by Stockholm, Sweden and Hovedstaden, Denmark. For 159 regions, performance has increased in the nine-year observation period. This year’s Regional Innovation Scoreboard demonstrates a strong convergence in regional performance with decreasing performance differences between regions.