Press Release 28/10/2020

EUROPEAN INNOVATION SCOREBOARD-EIS. 2020

The Basque Country consolidates its position among European countries with high innovation

Human Resources, Attractive Research Systems and Employment Impacts are the dimensions with the best results

The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) 2020, stood at 0.502 in the Basque Country with data referring to 2019, practically identical to the EU-27 average, with a value of 0.507, according to Eustat data. This figure places the Basque Country at the level of the group of countries with high innovation, obtaining an average higher than the 95% registered by the EU-27, specifically 99.1% in 2019, whereas it was only 91.9% in 2012. For its part, Spain was amongst the moderately innovative countries, with a value of 0.432 and reached 85.1% of the European average in 2019.

The EIS scoreboard is continuously revised, often in terms of both its component indicators and its calculation formula, but also because the most up-to-date annual data on each country is incorporated. These changes mean that it is not possible to make comparisons with EIS publications in previous years. EIS 2020 provides data for the eight-year period from 2012 to 2019.

The EIS 2020 European Innovation Scoreboard attempts to measure the extent to which countries' economies have the capacity to develop innovation activities. The EU-27 countries are grouped into four categories, according to the rating scored and their position in relation to the European average.

In the first category, innovation leader countries, were those countries that scored a rating more than 125% of the European Union average: they were Sweden (0.71), Finland (0.71), Denmark (0.68), the Netherlands (0.65) and Luxembourg (0.64), although the country that was at the forefront of innovation in Europe was Switzerland (0.83).

In the second group, countries with high innovation, were those that achieved a rating of between 95% and 125% of the average. In this case, in descending order, were Belgium, Germany, Austria, Ireland, France, Estonia and Portugal, with scores between 0.61 and 0.49. The Basque Country, with a rating of 0.50, would be placed in this group, between France and Estonia, reaching 99.1% of the EU-27 average. Moreover, it is also the case that the difference between France and the Basque Country has been declining over these last eight years. Thus, France, traditionally in the position immediately above, stood at 107.6% of the European average in 2012, almost sixteen percentage points above the 91.9% of the Basque Country; seven years later, in 2019, the difference had fallen to 5.4 percentage points, with France now at 104.5% compared to the aforementioned 99.1% of the Basque Country.

Following these, the third group, countries with moderate innovation (between 50% and 95% of the average) included Cyprus, Spain, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Malta, Italy, Lithuania, Greece and five other countries, with ratings between 0.45 for Portugal and 0.30 for Poland and Croatia.

Lastly, in the fourth group, countries with low innovation (under 50% of the average) were Bulgaria and Romania, obtaining 0.23 and 0.16 points respectively.

It should be pointed out that the EIS 2020 European Innovation Scoreboard is structured into four main blocks of results, with 10 dimensions, for a total of 27 indicators.

In this regard, the Basque Country stands out in two blocks with respect to the European average, ‘FRAMEWORK CONDITIONS’ and ‘IMPACTS’.

In the first block, ‘FRAMEWORK CONDITIONS’ the Basque Country scored a rating of 0.60 compared to 0.45 in the EU; moreover, the Basque Country scored a better rating than the European average in all three dimensions comprising this block. ‘Human resources’, ‘Attractive Research Systems’ and ‘Innovation-Friendly Environment’.

In ‘Human resources’, a dimension that measures the availability of a highly qualified and trained workforce as key information for innovation, in the Basque Country two of the three indicators stood out with respect to the European average: the ‘New doctorate graduates aged 25-34’ stood at 3.47 per thousand in the Basque Country, while in the EU-27 it was 1.94 per thousand; the ‘Percentage of the Population aged 25-34 with tertiary education’ stood at 50.4%, with the community average standing at 39.2%. In the third indicator of this dimension ‘Percentage of the population aged 25-64 participating in lifelong learning’, the value obtained in the Basque Country, 8.5%, was lower than that of the EU-27, 10.6%.

‘Attractive Research Systems’, a dimension that measures the international competitiveness of the scientific framework, also comprises three indicators. The Basque Country stood out compared to the EU-27 in all three. Thus, the number of ‘International scientific co-publications per million inhabitants’ stood at 1,634 in the Basque Country compared to 1,093 in Europe, for the percentage of ‘Scientific Publications most cited internationally’ (excellent), the value for the Basque Country was 10.21% and 10.03% for the EU-27 and, finally, for ‘Foreign doctorate students as a percentage of all doctorate students’, the Basque Country scored 33.71% compared to 17.83% in the EU-27.

The third dimension of this first block analysed is ‘Innovation-Friendly Environment’ and measures the implementation of high-speed broadband networks and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. It includes two indicators and the Basque Country stood out in ‘Broadband Penetration’ with 34.0% compared to 23.0% in the EU-27; the evolution of this indicator is particularly significant, as it started off in 2012 with a penetration of 6.4% when it was 10%. in the EU-27. However, in ‘Opportunity-driven Entrepreneurship’, a motivational index, the Basque Country, with 1.93, was surpassed by the European Union, which obtained a value of 3.57.

In ‘IMPACTS’, the second block where the Basque Country also scored a better rating, 0.60, than the European average, 0.58, two dimensions are examined: ‘Employment Impacts’ and ‘Sales Impacts’.

The first, ‘Employment Impacts’, records the economic success of innovation on employment, and includes two indicators: ‘Employment in knowledge-intensive activities as a percentage of total employment’ with 12.40% in the Basque Country and 13.70% in Europe; and ‘Employment in fast growing enterprises in innovative sectors’, where the Basque Country, with 6.69% surpassed Europe, with 5.15%.

The second, ‘Sales Impacts’, assesses economic success in sales due to innovation activities and includes three indicators: ‘Exports of medium and high technology products as a percentage of total product exports’, 55.35 in the Basque Country compared to 57.14 in the EU-27, ‘Knowledge-intensive services exports as a percentage of total services exports’, 39.62 in the Basque Country compared to 68.40 in the EU-27 and ‘Sales of new-to-market and new-to-firm innovations as a percentage of turnover’ where the figure for the Basque Country, 19.06%, was higher than that for Europe, 12.51%.

In the other two blocks that make up the scoreboard, ‘INVESTMENTS’ and ‘INNOVATION ACTIVITIES’, the Basque Country scored a lower rating than the European average. In the first dimension, the Basque Country, with 0.56 points, was slightly below the average of the EU-27, which stood at 0.59 points. In the second, ‘Innovation Activities’, the European average was 0.49 points, while the Basque Country achieved 0.40 points.

However, in the ‘Innovation Activities’ block, the Basque Country surpassed the EU-27 in one of the three dimensions that it encompasses. The dimension in question is ‘Linkages’, which measures collaborative efforts between innovative companies and also with the public sector, where the Basque Country registered 0.47 points compared to 0.45 for the EU-27.

Going into greater detail, the Basque Country also surpassed the EU-27 in several indicators. Amongst these, special attention should be drawn the indicator ‘Enterprises providing training to develop or upgrade ICT skills of their personnel’, within the dimension ‘Firm investment’ in the ‘INVESTMENT’ block, where the Basque Country achieved 24.2% while in Europe the figure was 23.0%. Meanwhile, in the ‘Innovators’ dimension of the ‘INNOVATION ACTIVITIES’ block, for the indicators ‘SMEs with product or process innovations as a percentage of SMEs’ and ‘SMEs innovating in-house as a percentage of SMEs’, the Basque Country was again above the European average, 34.94% compared to 33.84% in the first case and 32.14% compared to 28.61% in the second. The same is the case in the ‘Linkages’ dimension within this same block, for the indicator ‘Innovative SMEs that collaborate with others as a percentage of SMEs’ with 13.54% in the Basque Country and 9.32% in the EU-27.



European Innovation Scoreboard, EIS 2020

http://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/innovation/facts-figures/scoreboards/index_en.htm

European Innovation Scoreboard EIS 2020 The Basque Country

https://www.eustat.eus/indicadores/ambito_99/temaseleccionado_45/indicadoresEstruc.html

For further information:

Eustat - Euskal Estatistika Erakundea / Basque Statistics Institute C/ Donostia-San Sebastián, 1 01010 Vitoria-Gasteiz Press Service: servicioprensa@eustat.eus Tel: 945 01 75 62