The European Commission has recently published the 2017 Industrial Research and Development (R&D) Investment Scoreboard. One of the main findings shown in this scoreboard is that European Union companies have significantly increased their investments in R&D, rising above the world’s average growth rate. While the world’s top 2500 companies in terms of investment into R&D increased this investment by 5.8% over 2016, companies with headquarters in the EU did so by 7%, with growth driven mainly by the information and communications technology, health and automotive sectors. The analysis also shows that the EU has the most productive companies in Chemicals (in terms of sales/employee) but that the R&D investment has decreased in this essential sector by -0.8%.
Source: http://iri.jrc.ec.europa.eu/