A more research-intensive and integrated European Research Area: Science, Technology and Competitiveness key figures report 2008/2009 (PDF; 9.1 MB)
Source: European Commission Directorate-General for Research
From the Executive Summary:

In 2000, the EU Member States responded to the challenge of globalisation with the Lisbon Strategy for a competitive knowledge-based economy and, as part of this strategy, the 3 % objective for R&D intensity and the initiative to create a European Research Area (ERA). The objectives are clear: invest more in research and increase excellence and efficiency by joining forces in a European Research Area, including opening up to the world and stimulating international cooperation and knowledge spill-over.

This report analyses the status of and progress towards these objectives. The report consists of two main parts and a Methodological Annex. Part I of the report presents data on R&D investment and its impact, while Part II provides for the first time an overview of progress towards realising the Euro- pean Research Area. While Part I is based on well known indicators, Part II is more experimental with indicators to be further developed in coming years. Additional statistical data can be found on the website of the European Commission (http://ec.europa.eu/research/era).

The report uses various groupings of countries. The analysis presents data, when available, for all the ‘ERA countries’ [7]. However, as comparable data at European level are mainly available for EU-27, many graphs and tables cover EU-27 only. Totals refer only to EU-27, as no totals are available for the ERA countries as a whole on a consistent basis.

Although there has been little evolution in R&D intensity at EU-27 level, there has been a considerable increase in R&D investment in real terms: between 2000 and 2006, R&D expenditure in EU-27 has grown in real terms by 14.8 %. Comparable figures for the US and Japan are 10.1 % and 21.9 %.
R&D expenditure grew in real terms in all 27 Member States between 2000 and 2006, although at strongly varying rates, ranging from 3.4% in Belgium to 211% in Estonia. The total real growth of R&D expen- diture between 2000 and 2006 exceeds 100% in the three Baltic States and in Cyprus. It is greater than 60 % in Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Ireland and Spain.

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