The Impact of the Pandemic on the Innovation Performance of European Countries

Julianna Csugány – Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, Egészségház utca 4., HU-3300, Eger, Hungary

Tamás Tánczos – Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, Egészségház utca 4., HU-3300, Eger, Hungary

Abstract: In the last few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives and the operation of the whole economy. The technological possibilities in the era of Industry 4.0 were already given, but the spread of digital solutions ac­celerated due to the pandemic, which was the catalyst of technological pro­gress. The adaptation of new technologies was faster, and the length of the dig­ital transition has been shortened. The impact of the pandemic prevails in both technological leader and follower countries, and because of this, the techno­logical gap between developed and developing countries may decrease. The technological follower countries can converge to leaders mainly in digital infra­structure which is the essential condition of the new technological era but some constraints remain that prevent them from taking advantage of technologi­cal progress. This technological revolution requires promoting the use, adop­tion, and adaptation of new technologies in all countries regardless of the lev­el of technological development. This research aims to analyse the changes in European countries’ innovation performance in the last years when the COV­ID-19 pandemic prevailed with data from European Innovation Scoreboard. Us­ing simple and multivariate statistical methods, the similarities and differences in technological progress in times of pandemic can be highlighted between the technological leader and follower countries in the European Union.

7th International Scientific Conference – EMAN 2023 – Economics and Management: How to Cope With Disrupted Times, Ljubljana, Slovenia, March 23, 2023, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, published by: Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans, Belgrade, Serbia; ISBN 978-86-80194-69-1, ISSN 2683-4510, DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/EMAN.2023

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission. 

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