25 years of tracking innovation: Why Europe needs to collaborate or risk falling behind

For a quarter-century, the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) has mapped how innovation takes root across Europe. Its 2025 edition, marking 25 years of tracking trends, sends a clear signal: progress continues — but it’s slowing, and it’s increasingly uneven.

This year’s updated framework reflects today’s priorities: digitalisation, high-tech resilience, and green productivity. Yet the latest data shows that while some countries surge ahead, others are slipping back — threatening Europe’s collective ability to stay globally competitive, particularly in high-impact sectors like health.

The message is simple: numbers can tell us where innovation is happening, but only collaboration will ensure it happens everywhere — and at the pace Europe needs.

Innovation growth is stalling — and fragmenting

Since 2018, EU innovation performance has grown by 12.6% — a promising long-term trend. But the pace has slowed, with overall EU performance dipping slightly between 2024 and 2025 (-0.4%). The gap between top performers and slower-growing innovation ecosystems is widening. Estonia leads the pack with a +30-point gain since 2018, while 14 countries experienced a year-on-year decline in their scores between 2024 and 2025.

Fragmentation carries a cost. When countries, sectors, and institutions innovate in silos, opportunities for scale, sustainability, and shared value are missed. For health innovation in particular, slow and uneven progress means patients wait longer for life-changing solutions to reach them.

EIT Health: Turning data into action

At EIT Health, we see these trends play out daily — and we exist to help counter them. As one of Europe’s largest health innovation networks, our mission is to connect the dots: bridging borders, sectors, and innovation capacities to accelerate solutions that improve lives.

We know what happens when ecosystems work together. To date, we’ve supported around 3,000 start-ups and SMEs, many in regions where innovation capacity needs a boost. These ventures have gone on to attract over 30 times the value of our initial support — proof that targeted investment and strong networks can unlock long-term economic and societal impact.

Through our 100+ member network — spanning universities, researchers, start-ups, venture capitalists, corporates, healthcare providers, regulators and payers — we help health innovations scale across Europe. Together, we’ve launched over 120 innovations to market, delivering new solutions to the patients who need them most.

This is what inclusive innovation looks like: ensuring great ideas aren’t limited by geography, and performance metrics rise when ecosystems pull together.

From measurement to mobilisation

The European Commission continues to evolve the Scoreboard to reflect shifting priorities — but the data comes with a call to action. Metrics won’t close the gaps on their own. Progress requires partnership: countries cannot act alone, and institutions working in isolation cannot drive lasting change.

As our CEO, Jean-Marc Bourez, recently wrote in Science|Business:

“Research, innovation and competitiveness are interdependent. When there is so much evidence that weak links between these three elements are holding Europe back, distinct structures are the last things we need. We need tight connections.”

At EIT Health, we believe the next phase of Europe’s innovation journey will not be defined by individual country scores, but by how well we connect the dots: strengthening every region’s ecosystem, empowering innovators wherever they are, and turning promising ideas into real-world impact — helping Europe go further, faster, together.

Read the op-ed: Science|Business Viewpoint – Divided, We Will Fall Behind
Explore the Scoreboard: European Commission Announcement