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| EU Member States’ innovation performance |
EU Innovation 2014: Ireland is ranked among the follower countries in the
latest Union Scorecard and has a ranking of 9 for performance among the EU 28
but that flatters as it mainly represents the activities of a minority of
foreign firms.
In addition technology output/ exports are
exaggerated by tax avoidance e.g. Google books almost half its global revenues
in Ireland.
Today's report says that although Ireland
experienced an increase in its innovation performance, the growth rate was below
that of the EU. This means performance relative to that of the EU has declined,
from 115% in 2006 to 110% in 2013.
Ireland performs well above the EU average on International scientific
co-publications and License and patent revenues from abroad (again this is an
tax related issue). Other strong performing indicators are Population with
tertiary education, Employment in knowledge intensive-services and
Knowledge-intensive services exports. Relative weaknesses are in Community
designs and Non-R&D innovation expenditures.
In 2012, patent filing in Ireland were at a
30-year low and according to IDA Ireland, more than 70% of its client firms do
not do research and development (R&D).
Finfacts:
Irish Innovation: Craig Barrett says triple R&D spending; Public
welfare?
Sweden’s innovation system is once more in first position in the
EU with the overall ranking remaining relatively stable…
The Scorecard says Sweden has once more the best performing innovation system in
the EU, followed by Denmark, Germany and Finland. Overall, the performance group
memberships remained relatively stable compared to the previous IUS edition with
Poland being the only country that changed group membership by advancing from
the Modest to the Moderate innovators.
Based on the average innovation performance, the Member States
fall into four different performance groups:
Denmark (DK), Finland (FI),
Germany (DE) and Sweden (SE) are “Innovation
Leaders” with innovation performance
well above that of the EU average;
Austria
(AT), Belgium (BE), Cyprus (CY), Estonia (EE), France (FR), Ireland (IE),
Luxembourg (LU), Netherlands (NL), Slovenia (SI) and the United Kingdom (UK) are
“Innovation followers”
with innovation performance above or close
to that of the EU average;
The performance of Croatia (HR),
Czech Republic (CZ), Greece (EL), Hungary (HU), Italy (IT), Lithuania (LT),
Malta (MT), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Slovakia (SK) and Spain (ES) is below
that of the EU average. These countries are ‘Moderate
innovators’; Bulgaria (BG), Latvia (LV) and Romania (RO) are “Modest
innovators” with innovation performance
well below that of the EU average.
The
Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) 2014 uses the most recent
available data from Eurostat and other internationally recognised sources with
data referring to 2012 for 11 indicators, 2011 for 4 indicators, 2010 for 9
indicators and 2009 for 1 indicator.
The IUS 2014 gives a comparative assessment of the innovation
performance of the EU Member States and the relative strengths and weaknesses of
their research and innovation systems. It monitors innovation trends across the
EU Member States, including Croatia, from this edition as the 28th
Member State, as well as
Iceland, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland
and Turkey. It also includes comparisons between the EU and 10 global
competitors. Average innovation performance is measured by summarizing
performance over equally weighted 25 indicators in one composite indicator: the
Summary Innovation Index.
This year, the IUS2014 is accompanied by the Regional Innovation Scoreboard
2014.
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