In 2020, the Member States of the EU spent around €311 billion on research & development (R&D). This is a decrease of €1 billion compared with 2019 (€312 billion). The R&D intensity, i.e. R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP, stood at 2.3% in 2020, compared with 2.2% in 2019. However, this small increase is due to a decrease in GDP as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ten years earlier (2010), R&D intensity was 2.0%. 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. 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 2020, followed by the higher education sector (22%), the government sector (12%) and the private non-profit sector (1%; data might not add up to 100% due to rounding). This information comes from data on R&D expenditure published by Eurostat today. In 2020, the highest R&D intensity was recorded in Belgium and Sweden (3.5% of GDP), followed by Austria (3.2%) and Germany (3.1%). At the opposite end of the scale, six Member States recorded a R&D intensity below 1% of GDP: Romania (0.5%), Malta and Latvia (both 0.7%), Cyprus, Bulgaria and Slovakia (all 0.9%). Over the last ten years, R&D intensity rose in 24 Member States, with the highest increase recorded in Belgium (+1.5 percentage points; from 2.0% of GDP in 2010 to 3.5% in 2020), Greece (+0.9 pp; from 0.6% to 1.5%), Poland and Czechia (both +0.7 pp; from 0.7% to 1.4% and from 1.3% to 2.0%, respectively). In contrast, R&D intensity decreased in three Member States; Finland (-0.8 pp; from 3.7% to 2.9%), Ireland and Luxembourg (both -0.4 pp; from 1.6% to 1.2% and from 1.5% to 1.1%, respectively).
Around 32% of Romanians plan to spend their upcoming holidays abroad, with Greece, Italy, and Spain topping the list of preferred destinations, according to the Visa CEE Travel and Payment Intentions Study 2025. Of those going abroad for the summer, nearly 40% say they are “experience seekers,” prioritizing discoveries and stepping out of their comfort […]
Călin Georgescu, the far-right, Russia-friendly politician who surprisingly emerged as the first-round winner of last year’s presidential elections, will remain under judicial supervision after the District 1 Court in Bucharest rejected his appeal against the prosecutors’ decision to extend the preventive measure,
The mayor of Timișoara, Dominic Fritz, will be the new leader of the Save Romania Union party, or USR, after he received 67.2% of the votes in an internal race. The vote for the new party president was conducted online and started Wednesday at 10 AM and ended Friday at noon. A total of 10,914 […]
The Sports Barometer in Romania, a study conducted by IRES and presented on Thursday, June 12, during the Sports Festival, reveals that 32% of Romanians do not engage in any type of physical activity, and that as age increases motivation drastically decreases. According to the study, 28% of Romanians are super-active and do a form […]
The Romanian-American University has officially launched the country’s first Department of Latin American Studies (DSLA), marking a significant step in its internationalization efforts. The inauguration brought together official representatives from eight Latin American countries - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay - underlining the strong diplomatic support for deepening educational and cultural […]
Romanian president Nicușor Dan laid wreaths on Friday, June 13, at the Monument dedicated to the memory of the victims of the June 13–15, 1990 Mineriad and at the “Kilometer Zero of Democracy” Monument. The violent events of June 1990 remain in post-communist memory as the “June 13–15, 1990 Mineriad” and refer to the repression, […]
