The third ERA Scoreboard monitors Europe’s R&I progress against its priorities and shows where Switzerland leads among associated countries.
In line with its ambition to create a borderless market for research, innovation and technology across the EU, the European Commission has published the ERA Scoreboard 2025. Now in its third edition, the Scoreboard forms part of the ERA monitoring mechanism and sheds light on progress towards achieving the priorities of the European Research Area (ERA). Its findings are structured around the following priorities: i. deepening a truly functioning internal market for knowledge; ii. tackling the green transition, digital transformation and other societal challenges; iii. enhancing access to research and innovation excellence across the Union and strengthening innovation ecosystems; iv. and advancing coordinated R&I investments and reforms. This article looks at the indicators that recorded substantial, moderate and the least progress, and highlights the areas where Switzerland is leading.
The report compares each indicator’s average annual growth across three periods (since 2010, 2015 and 2018 to 2024); for results from last ERA scoreboard (see SwissCore article). An indicator that grows in all three periods receives the highest score. On this basis, the sub-priorities recording the highest score are R&D investment, open science, gender equality, researchers’ careers and mobility, global engagement, synergies with sectoral and industrial policies, active citizen and societal engagement in R&I, and synergies between EU, national and regional funding programmes. The share of publications available in open access has continued to rise, the number of researchers per million inhabitants has increased, and women’s representation in senior academic positions has improved, although gaps across countries remain. International co-publications and cross-border research links also remain comparatively strong.
In 2025, moderate progress is observed in knowledge valorisation and in efforts to strengthen R&I systems in lower-performing countries and regions. While knowledge valorisation indicators are broadly stable and public-private co-publication has increased over time, collaboration between academia and industry remains uneven across Member States, and the engagement of low-innovation firms with higher education institutions has not advanced significantly. For widening countries, the Scoreboard confirms long-term convergence in R&D investment, Horizon programme participation and innovation performance, yet recent years point to a loss of momentum and persistent gaps between countries, with the number of participations of widening countries in Horizon Europe failing to increase as hoped.
The least progress is recorded in scientific leadership, challenge-based ERA actions, synergies with education and the European Skills Agenda, excellence-based integration in lower-performing regions, and the coordination of R&I investments and reforms. The EU share of the world’s top 10% most cited publications has gradually declined, and public-private co-financing of public R&D remains broadly stable, with limited recent improvement. Gaps between countries persist. The Scoreboard warns that, without sustained reforms, stronger investment coordination and deeper collaboration across countries and sectors, Europe’s innovation impact and global competitiveness could weaken.
The report also considers performance among associated countries. Here Switzerland is leading in numerous indicators. Important to note that Switzerland is not compared to members states and instead benchmarked against associated countries. According to the report, Switzerland is gaining brain as it leads on net arrivals of international scientific authors, has the highest share of foreign doctorate students (above 50%), the highest share of master’s students with a prior degree abroad, and the most new doctoral graduates per 1’000 inhabitants aged 25-34 (1.9, ahead of the UK’s 1.6).For Knowledge valorisation & industry linkage, Switzerland has the highest public-private co-publication share (above 20%), highest industry collaboration in EU-FP projects per 1’000 academic staff, highest industry-academia co-patent share (tied with Iceland), and by far the highest charges for use of intellectual property (over $20bn, dwarfing other associated countries).On research excellence Switzerland has the highest share of publications in the world’s top-10% most cited (14%). This excellence is observed in the high success rate of Swiss researchers receiving EU ERC advanced grants this year and in the SERI’s recent Impact Report 2026 that highlighted that Switzerland had an overall success rate of 17.0% across all proposals in Horizon 2020, well above the average member state success rate of 14.4%. For Gender equality, Switzerland scores joint-highest (with Serbia) on the share of mixed-gender authored publications, exceeding 60%.
The next stage of the ERA monitoring mechanism will be the publication of country snapshots, giving a more detailed and tailored national picture of progress against the ERA priorities, including for Switzerland.