Recent study published by the European Commission shows that though Europe’s innovation performance remains relatively strong, the growth has been slowing down over the past years. Seen from regional perspective, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Finland keep the positions of innovation leaders. Performance disparities among member states regarding innovation remain high.
When it comes to innovation, the European Union as a whole is losing pace. This is the key finding revealed by the recent research study European Innovation Scoreboard 2025 (EIS) published by Commission’s DG for Research and Innovation. The study states that there has been no significant change to the EU’s innovation performance since 2022. The last year (2024 to 2025) has even seen a marginal decline at a rate of -0.4 per cent points.
EU’s competitors go faster
Compared to the rest of the world, the EU is lagging behind its chief competitors. According to the study, South Korea remains the most innovative country in 2025, with a summary innovation index of 152.2 per cent (relative to the EU). Measured by innovation’s progress, four of the world’s major powers – Australia, Canada, China, and the United States – also outperform the EU. Especially China’s performance has improved significantly in recent years.,
Back in Europe, performance disparities among different countries show that there is a persistent innovation gap though regional differences have slightly decreased over the past seven years. That suggests a very slight convergence at the EU level.
EIS is being published annually since 2025. Over the past quarter of a century, it has
become the central tool for monitoring innovation performance across the EU as well as for neighbouring countries. It also takes into consideration EU’s global partners and competitors. EIS helps stakeholders assess areas in which they need to concentrate their efforts to boost innovation performance.
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Sweden on top, Ireland and Croatia rising
The map showing the innovation performance of the EU27 Member States and neighbouring countries in 2025 resembles pre-1989 division of Europe that was bisected by the infamous iron curtain. The most innovative member states are found almost exclusively in Northern and Western Europe. Those lagging behind are Eastern and to some extent also Southern European countries.
Sweden regained its position as the most innovative EU member state, ahead of Denmark. The latter had been the leading member state from 2020 to 2024. The Netherlands ranks third, followed by Finland. All these four countries are labelled “Strong Innovators” in the study. Taking into account also non-EU countries within Europe, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Norway perform very well.
On the lower end of innovation scale are so-called Emerging Innovators. This group includes countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, or Slovakia. The non-EU Western Balkan countries also fall into this group though the study underlines that these nations have made a significant progress recently.
Looking at the period 2018-2025, two countries made a significant progress. Ireland now ranks top of the so-called Strong Innovators group. Croatia has improved its innovation performance by 19.4 per cent points from 2018 to 2025.
Employment, export value, or internet coverage
The EIS evaluates the impact of innovation activities on sales and employment, trade, as well as resource and labour productivity. It includes indicators such as employment in innovative enterprises, sales of new-to-market and new-to-firm innovations, and the export value of medium- and high-tech products.
In addition, the EIS goes beyond purely economic metrics by including environmental and social impacts. High-speed internet coverage and cloud computing are among the indicators that have been added recently.
