Science, research and innovation performance of the EU

On the 20th of February, the European Commission published a report on the benefits of research and innovation for EU’s prosperity and social model.

The report proves that Europe is a global leader in scientific excellence (nearly one third of all high-quality scientific publications worldwide are European), in terms of public investment in research and innovation (23%), and in the number of researchers. But it also highlights its weaknesses in transforming this excellence into innovation and entrepreneurship leadership.

To address this gap, the Report points out a number of actions the EU needs to adopt to become a frontrunner in innovation:

• prioritise innovation investment both in national and EU budgets;
• introduce new approaches to innovation support that can maximise the impacts of public investment and leverage more private innovation investment, notably by adopting a mission oriented approach that sets the direction of public investment  and reconnects science and innovation with citizens; and supporting the identification and scale-up of breakthrough market creating innovations;
• adapt regulatory frameworks to incentivise innovation, by ensuring that new regulation assesses its full impact on innovation while  minimising regulatory uncertainty for innovators;  and
• foster innovation-friendly business environment, by fulfilling the European Single Market and supporting reforms that improve the functioning of markets.

Source: European Commission