Germany, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Great Britain are the most innovative countries in the EU. As was published in the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) for 2007, these countries are global leaders together with the US and Japan. For the first time, the report also evaluated the so-called innovation efficiency. In this category, the leading countries are Germany and Luxemburg. Other EU member states are more and more catching up with these global leaders. Thus, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Lithuania are about to reach the EU´s average innovation level. The EIS also shows that the US are still a great distance ahead of the EU and that the catching up of the EU has slowed down recently.
Each year the EIS compares the EU´s overall innovation with the achievements of other countries outside the EU. The assessment is made on the basis of a range of indicators such as structural conditions, creating of new knowledge, innovation efforts by companies and concrete results (new products, services and intellectual property).
The report which covers a period of five years is subdivided into four innovation categories: the leaders which include Germany and Sweden as the most innovative country; the runner-ups Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; moderately innovative countries which include Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Norway, Slovenia, Spain and Australia and finally countries which are catching up (Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia). 