Innovation in the EU. Poland fourth from the bottom in the latest ranking of the European Commission

Poland was ranked 24th out of 27 Member States in the latest European Innovation Ranking 2022 published by the Commission. The report, published every year, makes it possible to compare the level of innovation, including digital development, investment in research projects or the level of employment in innovative projects in EU countries , countries neighboring the Union and world economies.

Poland – a budding innovator

In this year’s ranking, only Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania performed worse than Poland, with the result below 32.6%. the EU average turned out to be the least innovative economy in the European Union. Thus, together in Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia, seven member states with a result of less than 70 percent. the EU average was classified in the ranking in the group of the so-called beginning or emerging innovators. However, as experts comfort, Poland is developing more and more dynamically in terms of innovation, and its results have improved by over 11 percentage points over the last seven years, which is a very good result compared to other EU countries.

– The difference between the results of Poland and the EU is smaller and smaller – admit EU officials. As the report shows, Poland’s strengths are intellectual resources, including a large number of people with higher education, the mobility of employees in the science and technology sector or investments in digitization, e.g. in broadband. On the other hand, the weakest and still deteriorating aspect is the lack of investments in environmental technologies, the lack of expenditure on research and development, and the lack of support for research workers. In Poland, still few people obtain a doctoral degree, and there are still too few innovative enterprises.

Sweden is the queen of the ranking

This year’s report shows that the EU as a whole has improved its innovation performance by around 10% since 2015. As for individual Member States, 19 have improved their performance over the past year and eight have deteriorated. And so, for years the most developed country in terms of innovation in the EU is Sweden, which now with the result of 135%. the EU average was even better than in recent years. Outside Sweden, among the so-called innovation leaders, i.e. countries that obtained results above 125% Belgium, Denmark and Finland were included in the EU average, and this year the Netherlands also advanced to the group.

Among the countries that fared worse this year than in the previous year, there was Germany, where the level of innovation continues to grow, but at a slower pace than in other EU countries. Which does not change the fact that with the result of 117.5 percent. Berlin is among the strong innovators in the EU average, along with Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Austria, and from this year also Cyprus.

Germany. Digital skills are a weak point

Among the strengths of Germany, the authors of the report mention a high number of doctoral students, public-private partnerships or a high percentage of people employed in innovative enterprises, while the worst rated are the level of government support for research projects, the number of people with higher education in the general population, and the percentage of people who do not have digital skills. .

As in Poland, also in Germany there was a decrease in investments in environmental technologies, especially compared to 2015. In the third group, the so-called moderate innovators, whose results are at the level of 70-100 percent. the EU average, while the Czech Republic, Greece, Spain, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia were included. This year, Estonia also fell into this category, with the strongest drop in the EU (-8.9 percentage points) compared to last year, when it was perceived as a strong innovator.

East-West rift

The authors of the report note that the East-West innovation gap still persists in the EU.

“Innovation leaders and the strongest innovators are mainly found in Northern and Western Europe, and most moderate and budding innovators are in Southern and Eastern Europe,” EU officials admit. The European Commission has already announced that it intends to focus its efforts on closing this gap, which is also to help the EU become an innovation leader on a global level. Today the EU is still lagging behind its global competitors such as Australia, Canada and South Korea.

– Although the gap is narrowing – assures the European Commission. And recalls that since last year, the EU has managed to overtake Japan in terms of innovation.

‘Europe’s autonomy and competitiveness will depend on its ability to lead technology and trade in strategic areas such as space, defense, hydrogen, batteries, quantum chips and high performance computing, argues EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.