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Spending hit 1.27 per cent of GDP, according to government report of preliminary data
There was a “significant increase” in R&D spending in Greece in 2019, the national agency for research and technology has reported based on provisional data.
The General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) said on 20 November that total Greek spending on R&D appeared to have risen by 7.2 per cent on 2018, bringing it to €2.33 billion—1.27 per cent of the country’s GDP.
Greece’s deputy minister of development, Christos Dimas, hailed the increase, saying that raising R&D spending was a “strategic priority” as it creates jobs and stems the emigration of talented individuals.
Dimas said there was “a long way to go” before Greece hit the overall EU target to spend 3 per cent of GDP on R&D, but added that the GSRT was signing off R&D spending at a “much faster rate than in the past”.
“We believe that 2020, despite the Covid-19 crisis, will be a year of even greater growth in R&D spending in Greece,” he said.
In June, the EU’s annual innovation scoreboard showed that Greece was among the countries that improved its innovation performance the most between 2012 and 2019. The assessment evaluates performance on 27 indicators, such as the availability of broadband internet, international scientific publications and innovation spending.