1.39% of GDP on innovation gives Poland an average position in Europe
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In 2020 expenditure on research and development, from both enterprises and public administration, increased by 0.7 percent, reaching the level of PLN 32.4 billion. This means that the pandemic has not broken the nearly decade-long trend of continuous increase in innovation expenditure in Poland, but we are still average at best when compared to the western EU Member States.
Scientists from the ESPON research program financed by the European Commission analyzed the number of funds for research and development, both on the level of EU Member States, and in their regions. Three decades after the fall of Communism and 18 years after the enlargement of the EU, considerable differences in innovation expenditure between the “old” and the “new” members are still noticeable.
“The economic and intellectual potential of Europe is demonstrated by the fact that while being inhabited by only 7 percent of the world’s population, it is responsible for 20 percent of global investment in research and development. However, this number relates to all Member States taken together, and there are significant differences between individual states and regions. The innovative potential of Europe, due to R&D investments, the number of patents issued, and the level of digitization of public administration, is mainly driven by the old EU-15 states, particularly the Benelux countries, Scandinavia, and the western German states,” the ESPON report reads.
Eurostat data for 2020 show that Belgium and Sweden were the states which invested the most in research and development (3.5 percent GDP). They were followed by Austria (3.2 percent) and Germany (3.1 percent). On the other hand, as many as six Member States spent less than 1 percent of their GDPs on innovation. These were Romania, Malta, Latvia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Slovakia.
When compared to the whole of the EU, Poland's expenditures were average – in 2020 it took 17th place among all 27 Member States. Spending 1.39 percent of GDP on innovation gives our country a better position than Lithuania and Slovakia, but it is still behind Hungary (1.6 percent) and the Czech Republic (2.0 percent).
