Romania ranks last in the EU by R&D spending

Romania ranks on the last place among the 28 European Union member states for the spending on research & development (R&D), and is one of the few European countries that reduced their R&D spending during the last decade, Eurostat data show.

In 2017, the highest R&D intensities were recorded in Sweden (3.33 percent) and Austria (3.16 percent), followed by Denmark (3.06 percent) and Germany (3.02 percent), all with R&D expenditure above 3 percent of GDP.

“At the opposite end of the scale, eight Member States recorded a R&D intensity below 1 percent: Romania (0.5 percent), Latvia (0.51 percent), Malta (0.55 percent), Cyprus (0.56 percent), Bulgaria (0.75 percent), Croatia (0.86 percent), Lithuania and Slovakia (both 0.88 percent),” Eurostat said.

In 2016, Romania had the second lowest R&D expenditure in the EU, of 0.48 percent of GDP.

Over the last ten years, R&D intensity rose in twenty-one Member States, with the highest increases in Austria.

Conversely, R&D intensity decreased in six member states, including Romania, and most strongly in Finland (-0.59 pp) and Luxembourg (-0.33 pp).

Another report showed that, in 2017, only 28.2 percent of employees in Romania worked in high technology manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services sectors, compared with an EU average of 45.8 percent.