Metody mierzenia poziomu innowacyjności gospodarek krajów Unii Europejskiej

The aim of this article is to present definitions of innovation based on professional literature as well as to describe the “innovation” definition as criterion to get support from structural founds. One of the aims of this article is to present selected criteria/rates included in methodologies of measurement of the EU countries economies, including Poland. The main methods used in this article are: descriptive method, basic statistical description methods and index method