Does Joining the EU Affect Firms’ Willingness to Innovate?

This study examines the potential impact of accession to the European Union (EU) on firms’ willingness to innovate focusing on five Central and Eastern European countries. To achieve this objective, we con struct an original pooled cross-sectional dataset by exploiting data from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) covering the period from 1998 to 2018. Employing a probit model, our empirical analysis indi cates that: (i) the accession of new countries to the EU appears to have a negative correlation with innovation willingness of firms within these countries and (ii) EU financial support is positively correlated with innovation willingness in the pre-integration phase, this association becomes weaker after the EU accession. These findings suggest that EU membership, while offering new opportunities, is also associated with institutional and competitive pressures that may reduce firms’ innovation willingness, especially in less developed economies.