'European Innovation Scoreboard' highlights Spain as one of the three countries to make most progress on innovation in 2019

Together with Cyprus and Finland, Spain is one of the three countries to have increased its innovative performance the most in 2019, according to the figures published on Tuesday by the European Commission in the European Innovation Scoreboard 2020. Spain has jumped five positions in the innovation ranking on last year, and now holds 14th position out of a total of 27 countries in the European Union, although it remains in the group of countries considered to be "moderate innovators".

The Scoreboard shows that the areas where Spain posts the best results are in human resources, an environment conducive to innovation and impacts on jobs. Specifically, with growth of 66.7%, Spain is the country with the highest rate of improvement in performance in the category of human resources between 2012 and 2019. Compared with the figures for 2018, Spain is also the country with the largest growth (34.3%) in this field and now stands in fifth place in the EU, ahead of countries considered to be strong innovators.

As regards an environment conducive to innovation, Spain stands in ninth position in 2019 and is, behind Malta, Poland and Lithuania, the country whose performance has most improved under this heading. It also stands above the European average on the impact on jobs, behind only Luxembourg, Malta and Latvia as the most improved.

In terms of those areas in which Spain can improve, this is noteworthy in innovation in small- and medium-sized enterprises, business investment and public-private collaboration.

Non official translation