EU’s R&D expenditure still at impasse

The latest Eurostat figures on the EU’s spending on R&D show no sign of improvement compared to last year’s statistics. Private sector investment has declined by one percentage point.

The latest Eurostat report on R&D expenditure in Europe shows that the EU’s research expenditure continues to stagnate, with a slight drop from the 2003 figure of 1.92% of GDP to 1.90% in 2004. The business sector investment declined by one point from 55% to 54%, leaving the EU far from its Barcelona target of spending at least 3% of GDP on R&D, two-thirds of which was to be by the private sector, by 2010. 

Finland is the only country fulfilling the Barcelona goals. Its R&D intensity was 3.51% in 2004 and 70% of total research expenditure in 2003 came from the business sector. Two-thirds or more of the Luxembourg (80%) and Germany (66%) total R&D expenditure are also financed by the private sector but they still need to reach the 3% target. As for Sweden, it has the highest R&D intensity (3.74 %) and is very close (65%) to obtaining the target of two-thirds of the total funding from industry. 

This year’s Eurostat survey considers also, for the year 2002, regional disparities in terms of R&D intensity. The German Braunschweig region leads this ranking with 7.1%, ahead of Northern Finland (4,2%) and the East of England (3.9%). As for foreign direct investment, Malta, Austria, Latvia and the UK were the countries which attracted the most foreign money in 2003, around one-fifth of their total expenditure.

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