Last year, the EU Member States have spent almost 283 billion euro on Research and Development (R&D), translating to 2.03% of the gross domestic product (GDP). That is shown by figures of Eurostat, the statistical agency of the EU. In this ranking, Belgium scores well above average (2.46% of the GDP). The Scandinavian countries, Germany and Austria are the only countries with better scores than Belgium.
In Belgium, R&D expenditure has increased from 1.81 percent in 2004 to 2.46 percent in 2014. In absolute terms this translates to an amount of 9.875 billion euro.
In the past 10 years, R&D expenditure in Europe as increased from 1.76% to 2.03% of the total GDP. The business world is the most important sector for R&D in Europe, accounting for a share of 64% of all R&D investments in 2014. It is followed by universities and colleges (23%), governmental bodies (12%) and the non-profit sector (1%).
Even though European R&D expenditure has increased in 10 years' time from 1.76% of the GDP to 2.03%, it is still much lower than in South Korea (4.15% in 2013) and Japan (3.47% in 2013) and also the United States (2.81% in 2012).
