In 2017, Malta's research and development intensity was among the lowest in the EU. Eight Member States recorded a R&D intensity below 1%: Romania (0.5%), Latvia (0.51%), Malta (0.55%), Cyprus (0.56%), Bulgaria (0.75%), Croatia (0.86%), Lithuania and Slovakia (both 0.88%).
In 2017, the Member States of the European Union spent all together almost €320 billion on Research & Development. 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.
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 2017, followed by the higher education sector (22%), the government sector (11%) and the private non-profit sector (1%).
This information on Research and Development in the EU was published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. 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 2017, the highest R&D intensities were recorded in Sweden (3.33%) and Austria (3.16%), followed by Denmark (3.06%) and Germany (3.02%), all with R&D expenditure above 3% of GDP, whilst Finland (2.76%), Belgium (2.58%) and France (2.25% in 2016) registered R&D expenditure between 2.0% and 3.0% of GDP.
At the opposite end of the scale, eight Member States recorded a R&D intensity below 1%: Romania (0.5%), Latvia (0.51%), Malta (0.55%), Cyprus (0.56%), Bulgaria (0.75%), Croatia (0.86%), Lithuania and Slovakia (both 0.88%).
Over the last ten years, R&D intensity rose in twenty-one Member States, with the highest increases in Austria (from 2.42% in 2007 to 3.16% in 2017, or +0.74 percentage points - pp) and Belgium (from 1.84% in 2007 to 2.58% in 2017, or +0.74 pp).
Conversely, R&D intensity decreased in six Member States and most strongly in Finland (-0.59 pp) and Luxembourg (-0.33 pp). In Malta, R&D intensity remained at the level of 0.55%.