This article addresses the contribution of academic research to European Union (EU) research and innovation policy. The focus is on the progress of the innovation research from the perspective of the evolving innovation policy at the EU level, while considering that academic innovation research is conducted at country levels. European research has progressed in quantifying the contributions of research and development (R&D) investment and of other intangibles to European productivity. The Europe-specific cross-border R&D cooperation enhances competitiveness, and R&D integration has attracted considerable research efforts but its informative value suffers from heterogeneous data and methods. Research has addressed specific instruments in the EU’s demand-oriented and systemic innovation policy such as EU-wide patent or cross-border public procurement. Greening the EU and national research and innovation policies as part of the European Green Deal (EGD) has stimulated new research on green innovation and its conditions and on the design of transformative innovation policy. The evolving innovation policy as expressed in the Competitiveness Compass 2024 provides an interesting agenda for future research. Research should simultaneously progress on adequate data and methodical work but also on the EU perspective, which includes all or at least many member states, preferably addresses cross-border externalities and fragmentation, and seeks economic and sociopolitical solutions within the specific institutional framework of the EU.