Brussels, 05/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - Sweden may be a global leader in R&D investment, but the EU as a whole is still lagging behind the Japan and the US, according to a new European Commission scoreboard published on 5 June. The latest data (2012) show that 6.6% of the total R&D government support (€6 billion) is invested in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the EU on average, compared to 9.1% in Japan and 7.9% in the US. Figures from the digital scoreboard show that greater effort is necessary to meet the goal set by the digital agenda for Europe: to reach €11 billion of annual total public spending on ICT R&D by 2020. The European commissioner for the digital agenda, stated: “Public funding in digital research and development is behind many of the great technologies we take for granted. Helping researchers develop their best ideas translates into new products and services, and into jobs”.
The digital scoreboard highlights Sweden's excellent performance in digital research investment. This percentage has risen to 54% (€551 million), far ahead of the other high performers, such as Belgium (11.1%), Czech Republic (10.7%), Finland 10.4%, Slovenia (10.1%). Per capita, this corresponds to €58. In comparison, Sweden spends more than Italy (€0.52bn), yet Italy has 6 times the population.
The document also reveals that the five main public contributors were Germany by far, with €1.2 billion, followed by the United Kingdom (€690 million), Spain (€600 million) and Sweden (€551 million). The member states that invest extremely little in this area of Malta (0.4%), Cyprus (1.9%), Portugal (1.5%) and France (3.5%).
The European Commission allocated 16% of its research budget to ICT. Around €13 billion the Commission's Horizon 2020 research programme (2014-2020) will go to ICT projects over a seven-year period. Universities, companies and researchers in Germany (€1.6 billion), the UK (€1 billion), Italy (€0.8 billion), France (€0.7 billion) and Spain (€0.6 billion) receive 60% of the total EU funding and accounted for 57% of participations during the period 2007-2013. The scoreboard also underlines the following significant facts: 1) higher education accounts for 57% of EU ICT research participation; 2) start-ups and small and medium businesses account for 16% of participation; 3) SMEs do best in language technology projects (over 30% of participation); 4) SMEs do best in Estonia (42%), Slovakia (34%) and Bulgaria (33%). (IL)