RSS
Eurostat: Romania, Malta and Cyprus allocate the least for research and development
Research & Development (R&D) is a major driver of innovation, and R&D expenditure and intensity are two of the key indicators used to monitor resources devoted to science and technology worldwide.
In 2019, the Member States of the European Union (EU) spent over €306 billion on R&D. The R&D intensity, i.e. R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP, stood at 2.19% in 2019, compared with 2.18% in 2018. Ten years earlier (2009), R&D intensity was 1.97%.
With respect to other major economies, R&D intensity in the EU was much lower than in South Korea (4.52% in 2018), Japan (3.28% in 2018) and the United States (2.82% in 2018), while it was at about the same level as in China (2.06% in 2018), higher than in the UK (1.76%) and much higher than in Russia (1.03%) and Turkey (1.03% in 2018).
The business enterprise sector continues to be the main sector in which R&D expenditure was spent, accounting for 66% of total R&D disbursed in 2019, followed by the higher education sector (22%), the government sector (11%) and the private non-profit sector (1%).
R&D intensity above 3% in Sweden, Austria and Germany
In 2019, the highest R&D intensity was recorded in Sweden (3.39%), followed by Austria (3.19%) and Germany (3.17%), all with R&D expenditure above 3% of GDP. They were ahead of Denmark (2.96%), Belgium (2.89%) and Finland (2.79%), all registering R&D expenditure close to 3.0% of GDP.
At the opposite end of the scale, eight Member States recorded a R&D intensity below 1% of GDP: Romania (0.48%), Malta (0.61%), Cyprus (0.63%), Latvia (0.64%), Ireland (0.78%), Slovakia (0.83%), Bulgaria (0.84%) and Lithuania (0.99%).
Over the last ten years, R&D intensity rose in 19 Member States, with the highest increase recorded in Belgium (from 2.00% of GDP in 2009 to 2.89% in 2019, or +0.89 percentage points (pp)), Poland (+0.66 pp), Czechia (+0.65 pp) and Greece (+0.64 pp).
In contrast, R&D intensity decreased in 6 Member States, with the highest decrease in Finland (-0.94 pp) and Ireland (-0.83 pp), while it remained stable in the remaining 2 Member States: France and Sweden.