2023-07-06 13:00:27
Austria has improved from eighth to sixth place in the EU innovation ranking this year. This is shown by the European Innovation Scoreboard 2023 (EIS) published by the EU Commission. Although Austria is not yet in the group of leading innovation countries, it does lead the group of “strong innovators”. The goal of advancing to fifth place in the EIS is formulated in the research strategy of the federal government.
This year’s list of “Innovation Leaders” is led by Denmark ahead of Sweden, Finland, Belgium and the Netherlands. Just behind Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, Cyprus and France form the group of pursuers, all of which are above the EU average. The EU Innovation Scoreboard assesses the relative strengths and weaknesses of national innovation systems using a total of 32 indicators, grouped into twelve ‘innovation dimensions’ in the report.
On average in the EU, performance increased by 8.5 percent between 2016 and 2023. With an increase of 6.4 percent, Austria is on par with Slovakia and just behind Germany (7.6 percent). At the top of this ranking is Cyprus with growth of 35.6 percent, which has been able to rank among the “strong innovators” in recent years from a rather modest starting point. Compared to the previous year’s ranking, Austria overtook Luxembourg and Ireland. In a year-on-year comparison to 2022, the increase in innovation performance in Germany was 0.6 percent, according to the report.
According to the EU Commission, the most innovative European country overall is still non-EU member Switzerland. In a pan-European comparison, the European Union comes in behind South Korea, Canada, the USA and Australia. Just behind the EU are Japan and China, which have caught up significantly in this area in recent years.
As the last representative of the “Innovation Leaders”, to which a country can belong if its innovation performance is a quarter above the EU average, Belgium achieved 125.8 percent. Austria will reach 119.9 percent in 2023. The strengths and weaknesses of the states are shown in the “innovation dimensions”: Austria achieves particularly high values in international networking, in the attractiveness of the research system, in the dimension “intellectual potential”, in “human resources”, in the field of “innovators”. or under “Funding and Support”.
The country performs poorly in the area of ”digitization”, with broadband penetration in particular being well below the EU average. The areas “Economic influence of innovations” and “Use of information technologies” are below average or just below average.
Education and Science Minister Martin Polaschek (ÖVP) was “delighted” in a broadcast regarding Austria’s improvement in the EIS. For the desired jump into the top 5, great efforts are still required from all researchers involved as well as the financing companies and the public sector”.
For Economics Minister Martin Kocher (ÖVP), Austria is “on the verge of becoming the European innovation leader”. Climate protection minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) spoke of an “excellent result” that shows “that consistent, targeted investments in research and innovation pay off”.
(SERVICE – The ranking and the country evaluations: https://go.apa.at/TN8wK910)
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