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European Innovation Scoreboard 2021

Romania is an Emerging Innovator. Romania’s strengths are in Sales impacts, Digitalisation and
Over time, performance relative to the EU Environmental sustainability. The top-3 indicators include Medium and
has remained the same. high-tech goods exports, Broadband penetration, and Venture capital
expenditures.
Recent performance increases are observed for International scientific
180 co-publications, Most-cited publications, Foreign doctorate students,
160 Broadband penetration, and Innovative SMEs collaborating with others.
Romania has an above share of Non-innovators without disposition to
140 innovate and is showing below average scores on the Climate change
120 related indicators.

100
80
60 Relative to Relative to EU
35 35 Romania EU 2021 in 2014 in
40 31 31 31 33 33 33
2021 2014 2021
20 SUMMARY INNOVATION INDEX 31.2 31.0 35.1
31 31 31 32 33 31 30 31 Human resources 13.2 39.6 14.0
0 Doctorate graduates 22.1 77.0 19.6
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Population with tertiary education 10.9 13.2 14.0
Lifelong learning 4.0 5.6 4.4
Relative to EU in base year Relative to EU in same year Attractive research systems 35.0 22.3 39.4
International scientific co-publications 36.1 30.0 47.4
Most cited publications 40.5 19.8 39.8
Structural differences with the EU are shown in the table Foreign doctorate students 24.0 17.7 28.5
below including, compared to the EIS 2020, new information on Digitalisation 61.8 57.4 85.5
different types of (innovating) enterprises (Innovation profiles) and Broadband penetration 100.0 104.9 151.7
environmental indicators. People with above basic overall digital skills 4.5 0.0 5.6
Finance and support 28.7 24.7 34.2
RO EU R&D expenditures in the public sector 3.6 21.1 3.5
Performance and structure of the economy Venture capital expenditures 72.6 28.3 122.0
GDP per capita (PPS) 20,400 30,800 Government support for business R&D 12.5 27.3 14.5
Average annual GDP growth (%) 0.4 -2.5 Firm investments 7.2 17.1 8.7
Employment share Manufacturing (NACE C) (%) 18.8 16.5
R&D expenditure in the business sector 16.3 11.0 18.1
of which High and Medium high-tech (%) 33.9 37.9
Non-R&D Innovation expenditures 0.0 40.4 0.0
Employment share Services (NACE G-N) (%) 32.4 41.2
Innovation expenditures per employee 6.3 4.7 8.4
of which Knowledge-intensive services (%) 26.8 35.1
Use of information technologies 26.1 11.1 30.2
Turnover share SMEs (%) 42.0 36.5
Turnover share large enterprises (%) 42.7 45.7 Enterprises providing ICT training 6.7 0.0 6.7
Foreign-controlled enterprises – share of value added (%) 15.9 11.8 Employed ICT specialists 42.9 23.8 57.1
Business and entrepreneurship Innovators 3.8 9.7 5.2
Enterprise births (10+ employees) (%) 2.2 1.0 Product innovators (SMEs) 7.8 0.0 11.0
Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) (%) 10.8 6.7 Business process innovators (SMEs) 0.0 18.2 0.0
FDI net inflows (% GDP) 2.9 2.0 Linkages 16.0 15.1 21.5
Top R&D spending enterprises per 10 million population 0.0 16.2 Innovative SMEs collaborating with others 13.4 0.0 19.7
Buyer sophistication (1 to 7 best) 2.8 3.7 Public-private co-publications 46.2 35.9 51.8
Innovation profiles Job-to-job mobility of HRST 0.0 10.3 0.0
In-house product innovators with market novelties 2.4 10.7 Intellectual assets 32.8 22.0 28.4
In-house product innovators without market novelties 5.0 12.3
PCT patent applications 6.3 4.7 5.5
In-house business process innovators 3.5 11.0
Trademark applications 56.9 47.0 59.8
Innovators that do not develop innovations themselves 3.4 11.6
Design applications 26.1 12.6 17.9
Innovation active non-innovators 0.2 3.3
Employment impacts 10.3 4.4 10.5
Non-innovators with potential to innovate 29.4 19.9
Non-innovators without disposition to innovate 56.0 31.3 Employment in knowledge-intensive activities 23.2 10.7 25.3
Governance and policy framework Employment in innovative enterprises 0.0 0.0 0.0
Ease of starting a business (0 to 100 best) 73.0 76.5 Sales impacts 79.9 55.9 81.4
Basic school entrepreneurial education and training 2.4 2.0 Medium and high tech goods exports 100.8 92.1 110.4
Govt. procurement of advanced tech. products 2.5 3.5 Knowledge-intensive services exports 61.3 46.7 64.9
Rule of law (-2.5 to 2.5 best) 0.4 1.1 Sales of innovative products 72.4 19.4 63.0
Climate change indicators Environmental sustainability 38.2 61.4 39.8
Circular material use rate 1.6 11.7 Resource productivity 10.6 7.7 15.7
Greenhouse gas emissions intensity of energy consumption 86.3 86.6 Air emissions by fine particulate matter 66.4 59.9 70.6
Eco-Innovation Index 57.0 100.0 Environment-related technologies 19.5 95.3 14.7
Demography
Population size 19.4 446.7 The colours show normalised performance in 2021 relative to that of the EU in 2021: dark
Average annual population growth (%) -0.5 0.1 green: above 125%; light green: between 100% and 125%; yellow: between 70% and 100%;
orange: below 70%. Normalised performance uses the data after a possible imputation of
Population density 83.7 108.8 missing data and transformation of the data.