On 13 December, the European Commission published its latest edition of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard.

The EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (the Scoreboard) is a tool to benchmark EU companies against their global competitors, understand industrial R&D dynamics and monitor trends going back up to ten years. The 2022 edition of the Scoreboard provides economic and financial information based on the most recent audited accounts of the world's top 2500 R&D investors and EU 1000 R&D investors. These companies, with headquarters in 41 countries and more than 900k subsidiaries all over the world, each invested over EUR 48.5 million in R&D in 2021. The total investment across all 2500 companies was EUR 1093.9 billion, an amount equivalent to 86.3% of the world’s business-funded R&D.

The latest edition showed that industrial R&D investment continued to grow significantly for the 12th consecutive year. Most corporate financial indicators that strongly suffered during the pandemic showed a significant recovery, particularly operating profits, net sales and capital expenditures.

The 2500 Scoreboard companies invested EUR 1 093.9 billion in R&D, 14.8% more than in 2020, and much higher than the increase in the 2021 Scoreboard (6.0%), which was impacted by COVID-19.

In 2021, the 361 companies based in the EU invested EUR 192.8 billion in R&D, which is an increase of 8.9% compared to 2020, in contrast to the reduction seen in the 2021 Scoreboard (-2.2%). The total R&D investment by these companies was thus 5.7% above the pre-COVID level of EUR 182.4 billion

As in previous years, companies headquartered in the United States and China showed the highest R&D growth (16.5% and 24.9%, respectively). Japanese companies also increased R&D expenditures but more modestly than their competitors (6.6%). Companies in the Rest of World group raised their R&D by 12.1%, driven by increased investments of companies based in the UK (12.6%), Taiwan (16.8%) and Switzerland (10.8%).

The EU remains the global leader in R&D investments by the automotive sector, where the transformation towards electric vehicles and digitalisation is fully underway in both established companies and younger firms. The Scoreboard also shows a broad sectoral diversification for the EU, especially compared to the US, where R&D investment is highly concentrated in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

More information.