Academic discourse on measuring entrepreneurship competitiveness in the European Union: a bibliometric analysis

Purpose This study aims to evaluate current landscape of entrepreneurship competitiveness research in the European Union (EU). Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a mixed-method approach to analyse influential publications, authors, institutions and thematic trends. Quantitative bibliometric approach was first applied for analysing a data set of 175 peer-reviewed publications (2001–2025) from the Scopus database. This step used machine learning tools (i.e. R Studio, VOSviewer and Phyton) to address four research questions probing performance evaluation, citation and co-citation patterns, bibliographic coupling and social network analysis. Inductive qualitative reasoning was further applied to interpret the findings so as to draw relevant implications from the dataset. Findings Bibliometric analysis revealed key trends related to entrepreneurship competitiveness measurement in the EU, e.g. innovation ecosystems, regional economic development and sustainability-driven entrepreneurship. Furthermore, top-tier journals, impactful authors and leading institutions contributing to this field were identified. In addition, qualitative insights highlighted evolving themes, for example, tourism and lifestyle entrepreneurship, technology integration and sustainable practices in the EU region. Research limitations/implications This study sampled only Scopus-indexed publications that excluded relevant grey literature or non-English works. In addition, the EU-centric scope may limit generalisability to other regions. Future researches may address these limitations. Practical implications Policymakers and academic institutions can leverage our findings to foster interdisciplinary collaborations and design frameworks that align entrepreneurship competitiveness with EU regional development and sustainability goals. Originality/value This study may be the first to conduct bibliometric mapping complemented by qualitative inductive analysis to explore entrepreneurship competitiveness researches in the EU.