Brussels, 28/01/2003 (Agence Europe) - The second interim report on cohesion stresses that north/south disparities regarding technological progress are even more accentuated at the regional level than between States. Some 31 regions of southern Europe register less than 10 patents per million inhabitants, whereas, in 33 regions, there are more than 200 patents for every million inhabitants. These more advanced regions include 18 regions of Germany, 4 Swedish regions, 3 Finnish, 2 French, 2 British and 2 Belgian regions. R&D spending exceeds the 3% GDP level in 17 of the 176 regions for which data are available. Ten of these regions are German, 2 Finnish, 2 French, one British and one Austrian and Sweden is counted as a whole. On the other hand, spending on R&D is lower than 1% of GDP in 86 regions and even below 0.5% in 27 regions, mainly in the south.