SLOVAKIA

For Slovakia, 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 Firm investments and Economic effects and relative weaknesses are in Finance and support, Linkages & entrepreneurship, Throughputs and Innovators.

Over the past 5 years, Finance and support and notably Throughputs have been the main drivers of the improvement in innovation performance, in particular as a result from strong growth in Broadband access by firms (33.3%), Community trademarks (34.1%) and Community designs (19.1%). Performance in Human resources has hardly improved and that in Firm investments has worsened, in particular due to a decreases in S&E and SSH doctorate graduates (-5.9%), Life-long learning (-6.4%) and Business R&D expenditures (-13.4%).