04 Dec 2025
Eurostat: EU spending on R&D exceeded €403 billion in 2024
According to Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, the European Union spent an estimated €403.1 billion on research & development (R&D) in 2024, indicating a 3.6% increase from 2023 (€389.2 billion). Compared with 2014, R&D expenditure grew by 62.2% from €248.6 billion, showing a steady rise in the last decade.
R&D intensity, defined as R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP, remained stable at 2.2%, similar to previous years. Between 2014 and 2024, R&D intensity in the EU increased by 0.1 percentage points (pp). Between 2014 and 2024, R&D intensity increased in 19 EU countries, with the largest increases recorded in Belgium (+1.0 pp), Greece (+0.7 pp) and Estonia and Croatia (+0.6 pp each). In 2024, 6 EU countries registered an R&D intensity equal to or higher than 3%, the EU target set by the European Council for the EU. The highest R&D intensity was recorded in Sweden (3.6%), Belgium (3.4%), Austria (3.3%) and Finland (3.2%), followed by Germany (3.1%) and Denmark (3.0%). By contrast, 7 EU countries reported R&D intensity below or equal to 1%: Romania and Malta (0.5% each), Cyprus (0.7%), Bulgaria (0.8%), Latvia (0.9%), and Slovakia and Luxembourg (1.0%).
The business enterprise sector continued to account for the largest share of R&D expenditure in 2024. It represented 66.5% of EU R&D spending, totalling €268.1 billion. It was followed by the higher education sector (€86.1 billion; 21.4%), the government sector (€43.5 billion; 10.8%), and the private non-profit sector (€5.4 billion; 1.3%).
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