The aim of the paper was to assess the capacity of EU countries to produce and use of knowledge for the purpose of bioeconomy. In order to fulfill the formulated aim a Hellwig’s method was applied. The potential of particular countries to creation and absorption of knowledge on renewable biological resources and possibilities of their use in production of bioproducts was described by three groups of variables. They include: human capital, research and development activity and industrial property rights. The results of linear ordering of countries and their grouping allowed the authors to distinguish four clusters which consist of countries at different level of knowledge based bioeconomy development. The results indicate that the highest potential to develop knowledge based bioeconomy has Germany and Great Britain.On the over hand Estonia and Lithuania has the smallest potential in this field.