Portugal joins a group of "highly innovative" EU countries

The 2020 edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS 2020) places Portugal in 12th place on this annual European Commission list, which aims to measure the performance of European Union member states in terms of innovation. The update of this ranking, released on June 23, moves Portugal from the group of "moderately innovative" to "strongly innovative", and now appears in this category alongside Belgium, Germany, Austria, Ireland, France and Estonia.

Portugal moved up 6 places compared to the list released in 2016, when it ranked 18th. Our country was also the country that rose the most in the innovation indicator between 2015 and 2019. These results are the result of the increase in the innovation capacity of companies, R&D entities and most of the actors in the National Innovation System.

Contributing to this rise in the ranking is the very positive national performance in the basic conditions for innovation: the internationalization of the research system, more people with access to higher education, and broadband penetration, indicators in which Portugal is above the EU average.

The conclusions of the diagnosis of the innovation system developed by EIS 2020 are taken into account in the definition of public policies in Portugal: the initiatives included in the National Reform Programme, as well as in the Strategy for Technological and Business Innovation 2018-2030 and the "Science Law", favour a better articulation between companies and entities of the scientific and technological system. In this plan, we highlight the INTERFACE Program, which aims to promote Interface Centers (CIT), cluster dynamics, the creation of Collaborative Laboratories (CoLAB) or the stimulation of collaboration between small and medium Portuguese companies with multinationals present in Portugal.

See the National Research Agency (ANI) website for more information on the European Innovation Scoreboard report.