The EU’s innovation performance since 2018 has remained steady increasing 12.6% points, according to the 2025 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). However, between 2024 and 2025 innovation performance declined marginally, by 0.4%.
This latest edition of the EIS, which has been published annually since 2001 by the European Commission: Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, shows that all countries in the EU have increased their innovation performance from the base year of 2018, although the increases vary widely from 0.9% points in Luxembourg to 30.0% points in Estonia.
Taking the top spot amongst the EU innovators in 2025 is Sweden, just ahead of Denmark, which had been the most innovative Member State from 2020 to 2024. Sweden increased its innovation score by 12.9% points when compared with its 2018 performance, and by 2.0% points over the last year. Sweden ranked first in eight of the 32 EIS indicators, including R&D expenditure in the business sector, cloud computing in enterprises, and production-based carbon dioxide productivity.
As well as the EU 27, the Scoreboard analysis looks 12 other European countries and finds that Switzerland, for the eighth year in a row, is the most innovative European country. This is attributed to improving performance on several indicators, the most notable being: venture capital expenditures, sales of new-to-market, and new-to-firm innovation, and the percentage of the population involved in lifelong learning.
Looking at the four innovation groups, which categorises Member States based on their scores, the Innovation Leaders comprise: Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland. These countries have an innovation performance great than 125% of the EU average. Strong Innovators: Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany, France and Estonia, are all performing 100% to 125% above the EU average. Moderate Innovators: Malta, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Lithuania, Czechia, Greece and Croatia, are the countries performing at between 70% and 100% of the EU average. And finally Emerging Innovators: Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Latvia, Bulgaria, and Romania, are performing below 70% of the EU average.
Outside of the EU South Korea remains the bloc's most innovative global competitor in 2025, outperforming the EU by 35.2% points. The EU also trails Canada, China, the US and Australia. Compared to the EIS 2024, China has pulled ahead of the EU and the US. Indeed since 2018, China’s innovation performance has increased the most, climbing 44.7% points, followed by South Korea, its performance rising 25.8% points, in the same period. The EIS attributes China’s strong showing to direct and indirect government support of business R&D and explains that this conclusion is based on “new data becoming available for 2017-2022.”
Commenting on the findings of the 2025 EIS, Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation said: “The 2025 scoreboard confirms our long-term progress, but also highlights the urgent need to do more and close persistent gaps between the different part of Europe. We are already making meaningful steps forward through our strategies for startups and scaleups, life sciences and AI in science.”
Categorised as an Innovation Leader, the UK ranks fifth most innovative country among the EU and neighbouring countries. Commenting on the UK, the EIS notes that “Investment in innovation shows a varied picture for the UK, with key strengths but also longstanding weaknesses. The country ranks first compared to the EU and neighbouring countries for venture capital expenditures, reflecting a solid access to funding for innovative enterprises by financial institutions and investors operating in the UK. This investment climate has supported the growth of high-potential start-ups and scale-ups, maintaining the UK’s position in European and global start-up ecosystem rankings.”
The EIS commentary on the UK adds: “The UK has experienced declines in certain innovation activities since 2018, notably in all three types of intellectual assets, these being patents, trademarks and design applications, as well as in SMEs introducing product innovations.”
The EIS 2025 uses 32 indicators capturing various aspects of innovation, including framework conditions, investments, innovation activities and impacts on the environment, economy and society.
Further reading:
• Global Innovation Index: R&D funding robust but venture capital plummets
• Innovation is key to growth. So why is it getting harder to do?
• Why science startups need more access to scale-up and testing facilities
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