European Innovation Scoreboard 2024

The European Union's innovation performance as measured by the European Innovation Scoreboard increased by 10% since 2017. Over this period, most EU Member States have increased their innovation performance, although the extent to which they have improved varies strongly. Between 2023 and 2024, the EU's innovation performance improved by 0.5 percentage points. More specifically, innovation performance increased in 15 Member States during this period. However, 11 Member States experienced a de…

The European Union's innovation performance as measured by the European Innovation Scoreboard increased by 10% since 2017. Over this period, most EU Member States have increased their innovation performance, although the extent to which they have improved varies strongly. Between 2023 and 2024, the EU's innovation performance improved by 0.5 percentage points. More specifically, innovation performance increased in 15 Member States during this period. However, 11 Member States experienced a decline in innovation performance.

Similarly to the previous editions, the European Innovation Scoreboard 2024 categorises Member States in four innovation groups based on their scores: Innovation Leaders (performance is above 125% of the EU average), Strong Innovators (between 100% and 125% of the EU average), Moderate Innovators (between 70% and 100% of the EU average) and Emerging Innovators (below 70% of the EU average).  

Denmark retained first position as the most innovative Member State, ahead of Sweden which was the leading EU Member State from 2017-2022. Compared to the last year’s edition, the performance of Member States has remained relatively stable. Only two countries experienced changes in their performance group. Estonia became a Strong Innovator following a steady growth pattern since 2017 whereas Belgium, which was an Innovation leader in EIS 2023, became a Strong Innovator, although it maintained its fifth position in the ranking. This change is partly explained by Belgium’s proximity to the cut-off value used for the performance groups.