The European Commission has just released its Innovation Union Scoreboard 2015, analysing the EU's performance in innovation. Sweden once again ranked first, followed by Denmark, Finland and Germany, whilst on the global scenario, South Korea and the USA remain the international leaders. The scoreboard analyses 8 innovation dimensions using 25 indicators and dividing the member states into 4 innovation groups.

The scoreboard shows that the recent economic crisis slowed down the EU's improvement in innovation, nonetheless Malta managed to achieve great improvement in this area. The average EU growth in innovation over the 2007-2014 period was registered at 1.0%. In this respect, Malta, Latvia and Bulgaria appear as innovation growth leaders.

Malta ranked 18th on the scoreboard amongst the EU member states, moving up from the 22nd position achieved last year. In the 'Moderate Innovators' group, Malta and the Czech Republic showed the most improvement. Malta demonstrated the greatest increase in innovation in Community Trademarks, non-R&D Innovation Expenditure and Community Designs. On the other hand, Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent applications appeared to be one of Malta's strongest weaknesses.

In order to further improve its score, Malta is currently working hard in the Youth upper secondary education sector, particular focusing on the issue of early school leaving and increasing the number of  new doctorate graduates by means of programmes part-financed by the European Union and the Malta Government Scholarship Scheme.

Parliamentary secretary for research, innovation, youth and sport Chris Agius was positive about Malta's results. He pointed out that Malta is headed in the right direction, however there is always room for improvement and Malta needs to uphold its work, with the contribution of all involved stakeholders, in orders to maintain its strong points and achieve its future goals.

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