This year marks the 25th anniversary of the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), first published by the European Commission in 2001. Since then, the EIS has become a key tool for measuring innovation performance and for supporting policy-making based on data and international comparisons. Through its overview, the EIS helps public authorities, businesses and research organisations to assess their strengths and challenges and better plan actions to foster innovation.
Europe’s innovation performance remains high – but growth is slowing
From 2018 to 2025, the European Union’s (EU) innovation performance grew by an average of 12.6 percentage points, a steady improvement despite a slowdown in recent years. All Member States have made progress, but the range between the worst and best performers is wide – from +0.9 percentage points in Luxembourg to +30.0 in Estonia. Sweden has regained its position as the EU’s most innovative country this year, while South Korea, China and the US remain the main global competitors.
Slovenia’s position – among moderate innovators
Slovenia is again among the Moderate Innovators this year, along with Italy, Spain, Portugal and some Central European countries. This means that its innovation performance remains below the EU average, but still above the threshold of the group of lowest-performing countries. This year, Slovenia ranked 13th out of 27 Member States with an overall index of 94.7, confirming steady but moderate progress. Since 2018, Slovenia has increased its innovation performance by 16.8 percentage points, and by a further 3.4 points in the last year. Among the biggest achievements are the high participation of the population in lifelong learning and very good rankings in public-private co-authorships and international scientific publications. At the same time, Slovenia still scores low on venture capital investment, non-R&D innovation expenditure and the share of ICT professionals in the workforce.
For Slovenia, it will be crucial to increase investment in research and development in the economy, strengthen cooperation between business and research institutions, and further boost digital transformation and sustainable innovation.
Focus on resource and labour productivity – the sustainable and economic impacts of innovation
Of particular interest this year is the new view on resource and labour productivity, which measures how innovation contributes to economic growth and the decarbonisation of production. The dimension includes three indicators: resource productivity (efficient use of raw materials), CO₂ productivity in manufacturing and labour productivity.
This dimension has strengthened compared to previous years, with the EU average increasing by 12.4 percentage points from 2024 to 2025. Ireland, Luxembourg, Denmark and the Netherlands are among the leaders, with countries such as Romania, Poland and Bulgaria at the bottom. Slovenia scored 78.6 on this dimension, placing it in the middle of the group of moderate innovators, but below the EU average, which means there are significant opportunities to improve sustainable productivity. Labour productivity was particularly low in Slovenia, while CO₂ productivity growth is very encouraging as of 2018.
Interestingly, Strong Innovators even outperformed the innovation leaders in this dimension. For example, Strong Innovators average 130% of the 2018 EU average for resource and labour productivity, while Innovation Leaders score slightly lower (123%). This shows that successfully integrating innovation and sustainability actions can bring significant benefits even to countries outside the very top of the ranking.
Between 2024 and 2025, Portugal (+20.9 percentage points), Spain (+20.1) and France (+16.0) recorded the highest productivity growth. For Slovenia, this is a clear signal that future development will be strongly linked to greater resource efficiency, reducing emissions and increasing value added per employee. This is where Slovenia has the most to gain, as the gap still allows for faster improvements.
Differences between groups of innovators remain large
Although there has been a gradual convergence between countries in recent years, differences between groups of innovators remain significant. The average difference in performance between groups is as follows: between innovation leaders and strong innovators 18 percentage points, between strong and moderate innovators 28 points and between moderate and emerging innovators 33 points. In most dimensions (e.g. digitisation, investment in IT, research excellence), higher performing countries have a stable advantage. Slovenia is particularly challenged by remaining below the EU average in areas such as the digital skills of the population and the share of ICT professionals in employment. Nevertheless, Slovenia scores very highly in some indicators, such as imports of high-tech products, exports of medium- and high-tech products and the share of firms with product innovation.
Despite these differences, there are also exceptional cases – in terms of resource and labour productivity, strong innovators outperformed innovation leaders this year, a rare situation in the history of the EIS.
Why is all this important for Slovenia?
The European Innovation Scoreboard provides valuable insights into how well Slovenia is following European trends, and which areas are particularly weak or strong. The results show that Slovenia has progressed faster than the EU average in recent years, but remains constrained by low levels of venture capital investment and digital competences. In the coming years, it will be crucial for Slovenia to accelerate the digital transformation of the economy, invest in R&D, especially in business, improve cooperation between the academic and business sectors, and increase labour productivity and resource use in a sustainable way. 25 years of innovation tracking clearly shows that countries that invest in innovation, digitisation and sustainability over the long term successfully achieve higher competitiveness, economic growth and quality of life. Slovenia, with its location, research capacities and open economy, has all the potential to accelerate this development.
Edina Babnik, Enterprise Europe Network – Slovenia
