SCIENCE PATTERNS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Abstract

In the Europe 2020 Strategy is stated that the European Union wants to be a world leader when it comes to innovation. Considering the innovation performance of all EU Member States, there is still a long way to go before this goal is met. As innovation and the generation of knowledge are strongly related. A better understanding of the knowledge generation of EU countries may pave the way to meet the goal. No such study is performed in recent years. In this descriptive study, quantitively the development of the science systems of all 28th Member States are analysed. The findings are: a significant occurrence of convergence among the countries. And the conclusion that sciences of main importance across the EU have extended in comparison to findings of earlier studies. These new science domains do match focus topics of the Horizon 2020 research funding programme.