(Brussels) For the second consecutive year, the European Union surpasses the United States in the field of global innovation, but is still lagging behind the most innovative countries: South Korea, Australia, Japan. This is according to the results of the “European Innovation Scoreboard 2020” (data from 2019) released in Brussels today. The European Commission highlights the “opportunities to better coordinate EU innovation policies” as well as the need to “help Europe improve its global competitiveness and strengthen the key role innovation plays in overcoming the coronavirus pandemic”. Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market, said: “This year’s Scoreboard shows that the EU is already a good place to do innovation, but we need to further step up efforts across the EU to find global solutions to contain the virus, and at the same time, help Europe’s recovery from the crisis”. The Scoreboard assesses a number of indicators mainly related to research and economic innovation, such as research applied to industrial production, investment in research, intellectual property, and innovation of processes in small and medium-sized enterprises. The top positions in the ranking of innovation leaders in the EU are held by Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. These countries are followed by “strong innovators” such as Belgium, Germany and France. And by “moderate innovators”, below the EU average: Spain, Cyprus, Italy (eighteenth out of 27), Poland, and Slovakia. At the bottom of the Scoreboard are Bulgaria and – ranking last – Romania.