Budapest, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 (MTI) – Hungary has come even closer to the EU average in the field of research, development and innovation this year.

According to a recent report by the European Commission (EC), Hungary has moved up one place to 21st in the innovation ranking, the best result among the “emerging innovators”.

The European Innovation Scoreboard 2022 was published by the EC on 22 September and provides a comparative picture of Member States’ innovation systems along 32 indicators in different dimensions. According to the scoreboard, Hungary’s innovation performance has further improved compared to the previous year, leading the group of “emerging innovators” ahead of Croatia, the Ministry of Culture and Innovation (KIM) informed MTI on Wednesday.

According to the report, Slovakia (23rd) and Poland (24th) were ranked behind Hungary among the V4 countries, while the Czech Republic was ranked 14th in the group of “moderate innovators”. Hungary’s performance is 69.8% of the EU average in 2022, exceeding the 2021 result and almost reaching the threshold of moderate innovators (70%). Compared to the 2021 result, Hungary’s increase is 3 percentage points, but if we look at the past seven years it is 7.1 percentage points.

The KIM briefing highlights that Hungary’s strengths at the indicator level include “foreign doctorate students”, “government support for business R&D”, “high-tech goods export” and “public-private co-publications”. Among the dimensions, Hungary performed best in the categories “Linkages”, “Sales impacts”, which mainly includes export sales, and “Finance and support”.

“We are renewing our innovation and knowledge production systems based on the best international examples. Learning from the best is always an honour, so to ensure knowledge-driven economic growth, we are creating university-led innovation ecosystems based on the best examples from the Netherlands, Finland, the UK, the US and Israel,” the briefing quotes László György, KIM State Secretary for Innovation and Higher Education.

As the briefing recalls, the Government has recently placed particular emphasis on improving the infrastructural conditions of universities and research institutes, and on linking them with businesses to create marketable, innovative products and services as a result of cooperation.

The impact of this coherent innovation policy are already visible in the newly published results: the highest increases compared to the previous year were recorded in the indicator group “Innovators”, which measures the share of innovative enterprises, and in the indicator group “Attractive research systems”, according to the EC report.

Improving innovation figures also prove that the reform of the RDI system has been successful, KIM points out.

Source: mti.hu