Innovation is a key driver of long-term growth for Europe’s territories. The capacity to innovate or absorb innovation is not only an important factor in regional development. It is also crucial to help regions manage the green and digital transition. However, the EU is home to uneven innovation capacities across its regions.
How big is the innovation divide? How does EU funding contribute to tackle it? Does it foster transnational R&I collaborations, critical to improve innovation performance?
The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) looks into these questions in a series of policy briefs published as a contribution to the recently published Science, Research and Innovation Performance of the EU report.
Geographical distribution of EU R&I funds
The first brief investigates the geographical concentration of main EU funds supporting research and innovation across EU regions, i.e. Cohesion Policy, Horizon 2020, and the Recovery and Resilience Facility-- to determine their complementarity. The analysis shows that Cohesion Policy and Horizon 2020 play a crucial role in supporting R&I activities in most regions of Eastern Europe as well as in many Mediterranean regions. Without these funds, R&D expenditure in many regions would diminish significantly.
The study notes that Cohesion Policy and Horizon 2020 have very different geographical distributions due to their different allocation criteria. Horizon 2020 funding has been much more territorially concentrated than R&I Cohesion Policy funding, with the bulk going to a small number of areas leading in R&I, which may increase the risk of regional disparities.
Finally, the Recovery and Resilience Facility provides substantial resources to R&I in a number of countries with both low and high innovation capacities due to its specific allocation methodology.
Exploring the link between regional disparities and the innovation divide
The second brief offers a comprehensive overview of the economic divide across EU regions over the past two decades and its relationship with innovation. The analysis shows that regional disparities at the EU level have essentially decreased since 2000, although the trend is not constant over time. However, disparities within countries have been increasing in most Member States, affecting regions with lower innovation capacities more extensively.
The analysis finds that higher innovation capacity at the regional level generally correlates with stronger convergence at both the EU and country levels (i.e reducing the difference in GDP per capita between each region and the best performing region, either in the EU as a whole or within the region’s country). Moreover, higher R&D expenditure at the regional level appears to be an important factor in reducing the economic gap among regions. In other words, the study finds evidence that innovation and economic divides are interlinked.
Transnational R&I collaborations
The third brief focuses on transnational R&I collaborations. Co-patent data show that R&I collaborations occur mostly at the national level.
The study finds that both Interreg programmes and Horizon 2020 play an important role in promoting more transnational collaborations. Reinforcing these networks is critical to enhance Europe’s competitiveness, given the existence of strong technological and industrial complementarities across EU territories that remain untapped.
The analysis shows that the development of R&I networks in Europe appears to be positively influenced by EU Interreg programmes, which finance transnational cooperation projects. More specifically,
The brief observes that participation in the Interreg 2014-2020 Europe Programme is positively correlated with participation in Horizon 2020 (H2020), showing good synergy between the two funding instruments.
Finally, being well-positioned in the network of R&I collaborations created through Horizon 2020 has a positive impact on the patenting activity of EU regions.
Policy briefs:
Assessing economic divide across EU regions between 2000 and 2021: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC136779
Research and Innovation Collaboration Networks across EU Regions over 2014-2020: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC136781
In search for the best match. Complementarities between R&I funds across EU regions: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC136780
Details
- Publication date
- 9 August 2024
- Author
- Joint Research Centre
- JRC portfolios
