Last year, total investment (both from the public and the private sectors) by European Union (EU) Member States amounted to almost €3 100 billion. Construction accounted for about half of these investments, with machinery, equipment & weapons systems (31%) and intellectual property products (19%) following. The intellectual property products category has shown the largest increase in investment in proportion to total capital investment.
Overall, total investment was equivalent to 20.1% of GDP in 2017, compared with 22.4% ten years ago, just before the economic and financial crisis. This represents a decrease of 2.3 percentage points (pp). The fall in investment is even more pronounced in the euro area: from 23.2% in 2007 to 20.5% in 2017 (-2.7 pp).
Ratio of investment to GDP highest in the Czech Republic and Sweden, lowest in Greece
Among the EU Member States, in 2017 investment accounted for a quarter of GDP in the Czech Republic (25.2%) and Sweden (24.9%). Estonia (23.7%), Austria (23.5%), Ireland (23.4%), Belgium (23.3%), Romania and Finland (both 22.6%) as well as France (22.4%) all had investment rates of over 20% of GDP.
At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest ratio of investment to GDP was recorded by Greece (12.6%), followed by Portugal (16.2%), the United Kingdom (16.9%), Luxembourg (17.0%), Italy (17.5%) and Poland (17.7%).
The source dataset can be found here.
Only Sweden, Austria and Germany have increased their investment to GDP ratio since 2007
Between 2007 and 2017, the ratio of investment to GDP decreased in 24 out of the 28 EU Member States.
Over this decade, the largest declines were observed in Latvia (19.9% in 2017 vs.36.4% in 2007, or -16.5 pp), Greece (-13.4 pp), Estonia (-12.9 pp), Romania (-12.5 pp), Spain (-10.4 pp), Slovenia (-10.3 pp), Lithuania (-9.8 pp) and Bulgaria (-9.1 pp).
In contrast, the ratio slightly rose between 2007 and 2017 in Sweden (from 23.9% of GDP in 2007 to 24.9% in 2017, or +1.0 pp), Austria (+0.6 pp) and Germany (+0.2 pp), while it remained almost stable in Belgium (+0.1 pp).
The source dataset can be found here.
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