Do We Have the Right Kind of Diversity in Innovation Policies Among EU Member Countries? WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 108

This paper focuses on the heterogeneity in innovation capacity within EU member countries. Who are the leading and who are the lagging EU countries? Is there a trend towards convergence over time? And how has the economic crisis affected this trend of convergence? We then take a look at the research and innovation policies which the EU countries have in place and try to assess whether these policies match with the heterogeneous EU countries' innovation capacity positions. We examine both the budgets allocated by EU countries to R&I as well as the various kinds of R&I policy programmes being deployed. More particularly, we examine how heterogeneous the deployment of policy instruments is across EU member countries and whether this matches with the heterogeneity in innovation capacity development among EU countries. Notwithstanding the large and increasing heterogeneity among EU countries in innovation capacity development, the evidence on innovation policies in EU countries shows a relative homogeneity of policy mixes in different countries. Current innovation policy mixes of instruments do not well reflect the countries' levels of innovation capacity development.