First estimates of Research & Development expenditure R&D expenditure in the EU increased slightly to 2.07% of GDP in 2017 Two thirds spent in the business enterprise sector.
In 2017, the Member States of the European Union (EU) spent all together almost €320 billion on Research & Development (R&D). The R&D intensity, i.e. R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP, stood at 2.07% in 2017, compared with 2.04% in 2016.
Ten years earlier (2007), R&D intensity was 1.77%. With respect to other major economies, R&D intensity in the EU was much lower than in South Korea (4.22% in 2015), Japan (3.28% in 2015) and the United States (2.76% in 2015), while it was at about the same level as in China (2.06% in 2015) and much higher than in Russia (1.1% in 2015) and Turkey (0.96%). In order to provide a stimulus to the EU’s competitiveness, an increase by 2020 of the R&D intensity to 3% in the EU is one of the five headline targets of the Europe 2020 strategy.
Fuente de la noticia: www.ec.europa.eu