In 2017, Croatian researchers and innovators have registered just ten patents.
In five years, Croatian researchers and innovators have registered just 55 patents with the European Patent Office (EPO). Last year, they filed only ten patents, fewer than any other EU member state, reports Večernji List on April 12, 2018.
Latvia, a country with half the population of Croatia, had 15 patents last year and 145 in the previous five years. In the five year period, Slovenia registered 588 patents, Slovakia 185 and Ireland, which is slightly larger than Croatia, about 3,000.
Last year, the EPO registered 69,000 patents in total, with almost half coming from Germany (25,000) and France (10,000).
The number of patents is just one of the elements which measure country’s innovation potential. The Croatian Innovation Index for 2016 was 54.7 percent, and only Bulgaria and Romania were worse, according to data by MEP Ivana Maletić and Benjamin Kardum, published in a regular bulletin in which Maletić, one of Croatia’s Members of the European Parliament, analyses Croatian economic and social achievements.
Croatian innovation potential has been declining in recent years. Since 2010, when it stood at 56 percent, Croatia has been overtaken by Poland and Latvia.
Taking into account individual segments on the basis of which country’s innovation potential is assessed, Croatia has achieved some progress in increasing the number of persons with a PhD degree, the number of people who have graduated from university, and in the expansion of the broadband network. However, the number of innovative companies has decreased considerably, both in production and in marketing, as well as the number of innovations in the market.
Maletić warns that one of the opportunities for improvement are European funds, from which 664.8 million euro should be spent on research, development and innovation in Croatia. Local government units, ministries, entrepreneurs and scientific organisations can apply for the funds. “Of 664.8 million euro available to Croatia, by February this year projects worth 100.6 million euro have been contracted, while 19.4 million euro has been paid,” said Maletić.
In addition to these funds, money for innovations in research can be found in the EU Horizon 2020 programme, whose total value is 78.6 billion euros. As part of this program, 1,882 project applications have been received from Croatia so far, and 209 projects have received 42.2 million euro in financing.
Croatia has 11,000 employed researchers in all sectors (0.6 percent of the total workforce), while in Slovenia the share of researchers in the total workforce is substantially higher.
The European innovation leaders are Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and Sweden, while Croatia belongs to the third group of countries considered to be moderate innovators, which includes states with between 50 and 90 percent of the EU average. With a 53.6 percent innovation efficiency, Croatia is just 3.6 percent above the threshold for modest innovators, with includes countries below 50 percent of the EU average.
Croatia spends 0.85 percent of GDP for research and development, while the EU average is two percent.
Translated from Večernji List (reported by Ljubica Gatarić).
