It has risen 21 places to number 72, according to the report recently published by the European Commission “Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS) 2023”.
The Basque Country is one of the regions with the highest innovation rate in Europe according to the report “Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS) 2023”, recently published by the European Commission and reported by the Minister of Economic Development, Sustainability and the Environment, Arantxa Tapia, after the Council of Directors today.
The report ranks the Basque Country among Europe’s high-innovation regions, having grown by 11.5% in innovation since 2016. As a result, it has risen from position 93 to position 72 among 239 innovative European regions, thanks to an overall improvement in all indicators for which public information exists.
The “Regional Innovation Scoreboard” measures the performance of regional innovation systems in Europe and is considered the most important international reference in this field.
The innovative performance of the Basque Country is almost 10% higher than the European Union average (+9.8%). It is also well above the state average (+23%), in a leading position compared to the rest of the autonomous regions.
The main assets lie in the impact of innovation on the sale of new products and in the high qualification of the young population. There are also some challenges related, for example, to the protection of innovation in community designs.
High innovation in a state of moderate innovation
Most regions are cataloged with the same innovation category or lower than that of the state they belong to. However, the Basque Country is a high innovation region in a state categorized as moderate innovation. For this reason, the European Commission classifies the Basque Country as a “pole of excellence” and there are not many regions that are categorized in this way. Some of these include: the Prague region of the Czech Republic; the autonomous province of Trento, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Emilia-Romagna in Italy; and the Budapest region of Hungary.
The Basque Country is the best-positioned autonomous community of the state in this ranking, above other reference regions such as Madrid, Catalonia and Navarra, which are classified as “highly innovative regions”. In addition, in this edition it improves its score compared to the second region, the Community of Madrid. In concrete terms, his score in 2021 was 2.6 percentage points above that of Madrid and in this edition this difference is increased to 3.2 percentage points.
In almost all countries, the most innovative region is usually the region where the country’s capital is located. However, the Basque Country is an exception, as the level of innovation is higher than that of the Community of Madrid. This case is reproduced in very few situations, for example with the Italian regions mentioned above, with Upper Bavaria in Germany or Flanders in Belgium.
Source: EITB
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
