Sweden, the EU's most innovation-friendly member - survey
Sweden has taken an early lead in the race to become Europe's most innovation-friendly country. In a new league table which measures individual Member States' approaches to innovation, set up following the EU's'dot.com' Lisbon meeting in March, Sweden and Finland have moved quickly into the top two places. The other high fliers are Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland. The UK and France are notable only for their mediocre positions and Greece and Portugal find themselves propping up the table. The type of measures which help a country's position in the table include fostering an environment for knowledge creation, such as providing seed capital, encouraging innovation among the young and providing appropriate incentives. Erkki Liikanen, the European Commissioner for Enterprise and the Information Society will be unveiling the latest results in the league tables, which are regularly updated, next month. He has already put in place other benchmarking league tables, such as the one displaying telecommunication costs in individual European states.