EVALUATION OF INNOVATION ECONOMIES OF THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE COMPARED TO OTHER EU COUNTRIES

The purpopse of this article is the evaluation of innovation economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) compared to other countries of the European Union, based on the aggregate indexes (Global Innovation Index, Innovation Union Scoreboard) and their components. It was found that the CEE countries are still a sizable distance from the “old members” of the European Union. The exceptions are Estonia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, that owe their position to the effectiveness of the deployment of innovative and relative high expenditure on the development of innovation finance. The weakest proved to be Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Poland.