VW tops global R&D ranking

For the first time since 2004, an EU company – the German carmaker Volkswagen – is the world’s largest private sector R&D investor. Volkswagen has topped the European Commission’s 2013 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard with an investment of €9.5bn in 2012.

Overall, EU-based firms (527 companies) stepped up R&D investment by 6.3%. That figure is just above the average of the 2000 firms in the Scoreboard (+6.2%). However, like last year they were behind their US counterparts (+8.2%). EU companies also showed a mixed performance depending on the sector, with strong R&D growth in some but stagnation or decline elsewhere.

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, said: “The EU still lags behind its main competitors in business investment in R&D, and there are some worrying signs in these latest reports. Despite the positive results of top EU companies in important industrial sectors such as automobiles, we are still too weak in high tech sectors such as biotechnology and software.”

The EU Scoreboard companies surveyed expect to increase their R&D investments by 2.6 % on average per year for the period 2013-2015, a fall in expectations over the previous year.