LATVIA

For Latvia, one of the Catching-up countries, innovation performance is well below the EU27 average but the rate of improvement is above that of the EU27. Relative strengths, compared to the country’s average performance, are in Human resources and Finance and support and relative weaknesses are in Linkages & entrepreneurship, Throughputs and Innovators.

Over the past 5 years, Finance and support and Throughputs have been the main drivers of the improvement in innovation performance, in particular as a result from strong growth in Public R&D expenditures (12.5%), Private credit (15.4%), EPO patents (17.8%), Community trademarks (35.9%) and Community designs (21.0%). Performance in Linkages & entrepreneurship has worsened, in particular due to a decrease in the Firm renewal rate (-17.2%).