Growth in EU research spending hides problems

For the second year running, EU firms outpaced their US counterparts in growth in research and development spending, according to a new scoreboard published by the European Commission on Monday (16 November).

But the scoreboard also highlights the diverging nature of R&D spending on both sides of the Atlantic, with the US clearly leading the way in higher-intensity R&D sectors such as biotechnology, while the EU is more dominant in medium-intensity sectors such as automobiles.

Th...