EU Innovation & Competitiveness 2011

This is one of the most comprehensive reports regarding EU's innovation and competitiveness (dated, June 2011). It's a 765 page report spanning several interesting topics. The report is divided into three main parts:

• Part I: Investment and performance in R&D - Investing in the future
• Part II: A European Research Area open to the world
• Part III: Towards an innovative Europe - contributing to the Innovation Union

Here is the full report (~44MB).

Overall Picture

Since this is a huge report, my suggestion would be to first have a look to the overall picture. The following report shows how Europe is positioned in research and innovation in the world and provides insights about the new geography of knowledge.

Overall picture: Europe’s competitive position in research and innovation - acting in the new geography of knowledge

Country Profiles 

If you are interested for a fact-sheet detailing  a specific country's profile, then follow the research and innovation performance by country page.

Greece

Here is the one about Greece's  research and innovation performance.

Enjoy!

EU R&D-Intensity 2006

The figure above shows the R&D Intensity in EU Member States. R&D Intensity is defined as the Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) as % of GDP.

Excerpt:
The stability of EU-27 R&D intensity at EU-27 level disguises quite different situations and developments across Member States. The EU-27 Member States and the Associated States are divided into four groups according to the level of R&D intensity:

• a group of Member States with high R&D-intensities: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Austria
  and Germany. Of the Associated States, Switzerland, Iceland and Israel have similar or higher R&D intensities;
• a group of three Member States with medium-high R&D intensities close to the EU-27 average: France, Belgium and the United Kingdom;
• a group of countries with medium-low R&D intensities (1 % to 1.7 %) composed of nine
  Member States and Norway;
• a group of countries with low R&D intensities (less than 1 % of GDP) composed of twelve
  Member States, Turkey and Croatia.

Greece's R&D Intensity was 0.57 in 2006 when the EU-27 average was 1.84%; ranked 21st in EU-27. In 2004 Greece's R&D Intensity was 0.6% and EU-25 average was 1.8%; ranked 21st in EU-25. The target for 2010 is set to 1.5% (EU-25 estimate: 2.6%).

Read more in:
Science, Technology and Competitiveness key figures report 2008/2009

The quality of Europe's scientific publications

The Figure on the side presents recent data on the 'Field-normalised Citation Impact Score' per scientific discipline for both the EU-25 and the US. It shows that the EU-25's scientific impact is around or below world average in almost all scientific disciplines. The EU-25 demonstrates a citation impact score above world average in 6 out of the 37 sub-fields, namely in 'Information and Communication Sciences', 'Physics', 'Astronomy', 'Civil Engineering', 'Earth Sciences' and 'Chemistry'.

Excerpt:
One of the most widely used proxies to assess the impact of scientific work are citations. Citations to scientific articles provide an indication of the extent to which the scientific work of a research unit/university/country has influence and impact on the world scientific community. The more citations a scientific oeuvre gets, the bigger its impact and relevance.

In this figure, the so-called 'Field-normalised Citation Impact Score' per scientific discipline is used as impact indicator. This indicator is considered as one of the most suitable measures for international comparisons. It is the ratio of the actual number of citations received per publication (excluding self-citations) published in a scientific sub-field to the ‘expected’ (average) number of citations received by all papers published worldwide in the same sub-field.

If the ratio is above 1.0, this means that the scientific oeuvre is cited more frequently than the world average. The denominator (average number of citations per sub-field) is a weighted average taking into account differences in impact between the journals related to the sub-field in question (thus high-impact journals are more heavily weighed than low-impact journals).

Compared to the US, the EU-25 demonstrates lower impact scores in 35 out of the 37 scientific disciplines [in two sub-fields of the Social Sciences the EU-25 shows a higher ('Information and Communication Sciences') or similar ('Social Geography and Demography') score]. The gap with the US is particularly striking (i.e. difference in citation impact >0.5) in disciplines such as ‘Chemistry’, ‘Computer Sciences’, ‘Material Sciences’ (in terms of number of publications the most important sub-field of the 'Engineering Sciences'), ‘Economics’, and ‘Statistical Probability and Analysis’.

Read more here (dated: 4 Apr 2007)

EU R&D funding - Public vs. private

The figure on the side shows the public versus private funding of R&D (GERD funded by government and by industry, as % of GDP), 2005.

Excerpt:
R&D efforts are largely financed by the business enterprise sector in Europe, the US and Japan. However, the role of government in the financing of R&D should not be underestimated. The level of government-funded R&D intensity is substantial in many high R&D intensive countries (e.g. Nordic countries, Germany, France, Austria and the US), showing that high private involvement in the funding of R&D does not preclude government funding. Moreover, in low R&D intensive countries, government-funded R&D is higher than business funded R&D. Government funding of R&D is critical for creating and developing S&T capabilities -a prerequisite for catching-up with countries at the technology frontier, or for supporting research projects with high expected social benefits (see Figure 3.8).

In the EU-25, government funding of R&D has been very stable since the end of the 1990s at around 0.64% of GDP (last year available: 2005). In the US, government-funded R&D shows more variability: it decreased from 0.8 to 0.7% of GDP between 1998 and 2001 and rose again from 0.71% of GDP in 2001 to 0.83% in 2004.

Read more here (dated: 4 Apr 2007)

Gap in R&D expenditure EU-27, US, Asia

The figure on the side shows the Gap in R&D expenditure (GERD) between EU-27 and US, and EU-27 and 5 Asian economies - in constant terms (million PPS, at 2002 prices) - 1995-2004

Excerpt:
Between 2000 and 2004, the gap in real terms in total R&D spending between Europe and the US was not reduced, and in fact increased slightly. After 2000, a new R&D gap emerged between Europe and a small group of important Asian economies including China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.


Read more here (dated: 4 Apr 2007)

R&D Intensity Comparison (EU-US-JP-CN)

The figure on the side shows the R&D Intensity in EU-25, US, Japan and China (1995-2005).

Excerpt:

After a period of slow but continued growth between 1996 and 2002, the EU-25 R&D intensity has been slightly decreasing between 2002 (1.89%) and 2005 (1.85%) (see Figure 3.1). Since in the US, the downward trend has come to an end, the gap in R&D intensity between the EU and the US is increasing again since 2002. The R&D intensity in Japan has been growing faster than in both the EU and the US over recent years. If the current trend persists, China will have caught up with the EU-25 by 2009 in terms of share of GDP devoted to R&D.

An examination of the individual Member States’ pace of progress after 2000, reveals a distinction between four groups of EU countries. A first group including the R&D-intensive countries Finland, Denmark, Austria and Germany, have been able to further increase their high R&D intensity and are pulling further ahead. Especially Austria has been able to progress very substantially over the recent years. France and Sweden experienced in the subsequent years a weakening of their growth performance and are now losing momentum. The new Member States Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland and Bulgaria, as well as Greece, and to a lesser extent Luxembourg, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands are falling further behind since 2000. Conversely, most of the other new Member States, in particular Malta, Cyprus and Estonia, and to a lesser extent Spain, Ireland, Italy and Portugal, have been catching up with the EU average. At the same time, development gaps in terms of the production of scientific knowledge and technological innovation between EU regions, even between regions in leading Member States, remain substantial (see Eurostat data on R&D expenditure and personnel in the European regions). The European research landscape remains characterized by a high concentration of research effort in comparatively few Member States and, within them, in comparatively few regions.

Read more here (dated: 4 Apr 2007)

EU R&D Intensity

The figure on the side shows the R&D Intensity in EU Member States. R&D Intensity is defined as the Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) as % of GDP.

Excerpt:
Through the revision of the Lisbon strategy in 2005, further strengthening of R&D policy as part of a reform agenda geared towards more growth and jobs. Following that, all Member States have in their National Reform Programmes now established targets for R&D expenditure, tailored to their specific situations (see Figure), which, if they were met, would in 2010 lead to an EU R&D intensity of 2.6% gross domestic product.

Greece's R&D Intensity was at 0.6% at 2004 (EU-25 average: 1.8%) and ranked 21st in EU-25. The target for 2010 is set to 1.5% (EU-25 estimate: 2.6%). Notably, Sweden and Finland were at 3.8% and 3.4% respectively with 2010 targets of 4%.

Read more here (dated: 4 Apr 2007)