News

The EU-27 countries, according to the rating achieved, can be grouped into four categories. In the first, innovation leader countries, came Sweden (0.64), Finland (0.61), Germany (0.58), Denmark (0.57) and United Kingdom (0.55), although the European country at the forefront of innovation in Europe, Switzerland (0.68), does not belong to the European Union.

The second group, innovation followers, included the Basque Country and was also comprised of Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, France and the Netherlands, with ratings above the European average, between 0.49 and 0.53.

Next came the third group, moderate innovators, which included Cyprus, Estonia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy. Finally, in the fourth group, catching-up countries, were Malta, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Latvia and Bulgaria.

These are very encouraging facts for Innobasque (Basque innovation Agency) because the index represents an essential step in the strategy that wants to set the Basque Country among the 10 most innovative countries in 2012.

The EIS (European Innovation Scoreboard) is an instrument developed at the initiative of the European Commission, under the Lisbon Strategy, to provide a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of EU Member States. It is calculated using innovation indicators and trend analyses for the EU27 Member States as well as for Croatia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, the US, Australia, Canada and Israel.