The Pillars of Innovation Across the EU-27 Countries Regarding Synthetic Measures in Light of Sustainable Development

Most studies on countries’ innovation focus on its overall assessment, neglecting the interactions of its components. This article discusses the EU-27 countries’ innovation in each of its pillars, Framework conditions, Investments, Innovation activities, and Impacts, as defined in the European Innovation Scoreboard 2025. We quantitatively examine the connections among the innovation pillars and compare the results of the synthetic measure of innovation indicator with the SDG Index. First, we use the zero-unitarisation method to calculate four synthetic measures of countries’ innovation. Then, we perform canonical correlation analysis to examine the interconnections among the measures. Subsequently, we propose rankings and classifications of countries based on their innovation levels. The results show that, although the four pillars of innovation are interrelated, Framework conditions are of key importance, with their impact being most evident in relation to Impacts. Sweden, Finland, and Denmark were the leaders in pillars of innovation and sustainable development. However, we found that some countries (Poland, Slovakia, and Latvia) with lower innovation levels still had higher SDG Index values, placing them in the more sustainable group. The results of the study show that the relationship between innovation and sustainable development is not simple or linear. There are EU-27 countries that rank highly in one area but not the other. The results not only allowed for the assessment of the EU-27 countries in terms of innovation but also indicated precise relationships within this framework, linking innovations with sustainable development.