Greece a low 20th in the EU in innovation | Business | ekathimerini.com

Greece has much more distance to cover in its performance in the area of innovation, as despite the progress of recent years it continues to lag other European Union countries.

This country ranks 20th among the 27 EU member-states on the European Innovation Scoreboard 2020 that the European Commission released on Tuesday, although, along with Lithuania, Malta, Latvia and Portugal, it saw its performance improve by over 20% between 2012 and 2019.

The scoreboard showed Greece’s innovation performance index at 76.7% of the EU average in 2019, against 62.8% in 2012, while its performance relative to the EU average in 2012 has this year climbed to 83.5%, an improvement of 20.7 percentage points in seven years.

Greece’s progress stems from its improved performance in sectors of low added-value, with many Greek enterprises appearing to have adopted – to a great extent, above the EU average rate – locally created new-to-market innovations.

Greece is a laggard in terms of innovation opportunities provided to innovation-friendly enterprises, with a low record in internet penetration speed among companies.