(Brussels) Once again, Sweden comes out the innovation leader in the EU, followed by Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg. They are closely followed by Germany (seventh), while France is eleventh and Italy nineteenth. These are the findings of the European Evaluation Framework for Innovation 2018, worked out by the EU Commission and published today, which shows that the EU’s achievements in innovation “keep improving but more efforts must be done to make Europe competitive with the rest of the world”. Once a year, the EU Commission publishes a comparative assessment of the innovative capacity of the member states, based on common indicators, and then compares such capacity with that of the international competitors. The figures are supposed to help the member states and the EU as a whole understand in which areas they should work harder. As in the past, Sweden, along with other Nordic countries, comes top of the list, while Mediterranean and Central-Eastern countries struggle behind. However, the EU is “filling the gap that separates it from its key competitors, which are Canada, Japan and the United States, but to fill the innovation gap and keep its edge over China it will need a joint effort”. The EU leaders in each innovation area are: Denmark in human resources and innovation-friendliness; Luxembourg in research systems; France in funding and support to research; Ireland in innovation in SMEs, impact on employment and sales; Belgium in innovative partnerships.