Innovation in the EU: Hungary in the 'Emerging' Group

The European Commission has published the 2022 edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard. According to the document, Hungary continues to be in the lowest, 'Emerging Innovators' category along with Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

The document says that compared to 2021, innovation performance in 2022 has improved for 19 Member States, and declined for eight. Compared to the EU average, global competitors such as Australia, Canada, Republic of Korea, and the United States continue having a performance advantage over the EU. Nevertheless, the EU has closed its performance gap with these nations and has surpassed Japan since 2021.

Based on their scores, EU members states fall into four performance groups: Innovation leaders (performance is above 125% of the EU average), Strong innovators (between 100% and 125% of the EU average), Moderate innovators (between 70% and 100% of the EU average) and Emerging innovators (below 70% of the EU average). Sweden continues to be the best performer in the EU. Other Innovation Leaders are Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland.

In Hungary's country profile, the Commission report says that the Hungarian performance is at 69.8% of the EU average; performance is increasing (7.1%-points) at a rate lower than that of the EU (9.9%-points); the country’s performance gap to the EU is becoming larger.