No increase for European R&D funding
R&D funding in Europe was unchanged from 2006 to 2007, sticking at 1. 85% of gross domestic product - or €229 billion - well below the Lisbon target of 3% by 2010.
R&D funding in Europe was unchanged from 2006 to 2007, sticking at 1.85% of gross domestic product - or €229 billion - well below the Lisbon target of 3% by 2010.
The figures show that the majority of funding is from private sources, with Europe’s governments committing 0.76% of GDP to R&D. This compares to 0.70% in Japan and 1.03% in the US. More significantly perhaps, between 1999 and 2006 there was no increase in the percentage contribution which national governments made to R&D in Europe as a whole – though total spending did rise by 3.6% in this time
In terms of research intensity, the highest public funder is the French government, which devoted 1.01% of GDP to R&D in 2006. At the other end of the scale were the governments of Bulgaria, Latvia, Slovakia and Malta, which put less than 0.3% of GDP into their research budgets.
The equivalent of 2.3 million full-time staff worked in R&D in the EU27 in 2007, with R&D personnel accounting for 1.6% of total employment. The highest proportions of R&D personnel were in Finland at 3.2% of total employment, Sweden, 2.7% and Luxembourg 2.6%.
