The Netherlands among top 3 European innovation leaders
The Netherlands also ranks third in the 2025 edition of the renowned European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS).
Published on July 22, 2025
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The Netherlands also ranks third in the 2025 edition of the renowned European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). This means that our country remains among the group of innovation leaders, behind frontrunners Sweden and Denmark. However, the Dutch score has fallen slightly for the second year in a row.
Innovation leaders are countries that score more than 25 percent above the EU average in the field of innovation. The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) compares all member states on the basis of 32 different indicators, also including countries outside the EU. Factors such as investment in R&D, cooperation between public and private parties, the innovative strength of SMEs, digitization, the number of patents, research quality, and employment in innovative sectors are taken into account.
Risk of losing position
The Netherlands is currently still scoring well thanks to strong performance in science, education, digitization, and cooperation between government and business. However, without additional investment, there is a significant risk that we will lose this position. In the field of research and development (R&D), the Netherlands is lagging behind in ninth place. We continue to trail far behind frontrunners such as Germany (3.1%), Austria (3.3%), Belgium (3.3%) and Sweden (3.6%). Together with countries such as France (2.2%), Slovenia (2.1%) and the Czech Republic (1.8%), the Netherlands has remained below the agreed 3% standard for years, despite earlier intentions to close the gap.
Karremans: ‘We need to do more’
Minister Karremans (Economic Affairs): "Our position in this ranking seems to say: ‘innovation is doing well here’. But if you take a closer look, the honest conclusion is that we all need to do more. We invest too little in innovation, both privately and publicly, we do not bring our good knowledge to the market sufficiently, and there are few knowledge-intensive companies in the Netherlands. Other countries are taking extra steps, and we must do the same. Because we have to earn before we can spend."
