Scaling up research and innovation to remain competitive: the EC has published the report 2026

The European Commission published the 2026 edition of the Science, Research and Innovation Performance of the EU report, providing a comprehensive assessment of Europe’s research and innovation landscape, and reported in the press release on October 1, 2026.

The report shows that Europe remains a global scientific leader. The EU ranks second worldwide in scientific output, while 57% of its scientific publications involve international collaboration.

The report highlights four main challenges that restrain turning scientific strength into strategic technologies, market leadership and productivity growth, and offered complex activities to overcome these challenges:

• Investment: the EU would need an estimated €560 billion in additional investment to meet its target of spending 3% of GDP on R&D by 2030.
• Fragmentation: research and innovation efforts remain spread across countries, regions and institutions, which limits their overall impact.
• Scaling up innovation: bottlenecks in financing, knowledge valorisation and technology deployment make it harder for discoveries to reach the market, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, advanced semiconductors and cloud computing.
• Global competition: Europe needs to strengthen its position in strategic technologies while maintaining scientific excellence and attracting top talent, including through initiatives such as Choose Europe.

According to the report, science, research and innovation must play a central role in boosting EU productivity while supporting Europe’s environmental goals and social model.

Please learn the report via the link.