Horizon Europe Programme in a World and European Context IV.

The February 5, 2024, post presented the position of European industrial corporations among the top 100 global innovators as seen by leading R&D analytics provider Patsnap in 2023. Patsnap's ranking included 24 European corporations. TC Prague added information on (1) R&D spending in 2021 from the 2022 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard and (2) participation in the EU's research and innovation framework programmes. The main conclusions of this contribution were, inter alia, that

• the mentioned 24 European corporations together claim a net EU contribution of several hundred million € - an amount similar to the net EU contribution claimed by Polish or Czech participants in the EU's research and innovation framework programmes;
• the net EU contribution claimed from the EU framework programmes by the largest corporate beneficiaries is the same as the net EU contribution claimed by some smaller countries with low R&D performance (e.g. Croatia, Bulgaria, Lithuania or Latvia);
• the funds received by corporations from the EU's research and innovation framework programmes represent only a small part of total corporate R&D expenditure;
• 9 corporations listed in the Patsnap 2023 ranking have annual R&D expenditures of more than €5 billion (i.e. higher than the total annual R&D expenditures in the Czech Republic).

Compared to Patsnap's 2023 ranking, the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard has a richer publicly available data base working with data from the financial statements of the world's 2,500 largest industrial corporations, with 520 corporations from Europe for 2022 (359 from EU member states). As the Patsnap’s 2023 ranking only works with the 100 corporations that are at the forefront of global technological progress, it is clear, that many major European industrial corporations with high R&D expenditures are not listed (e.g. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Airbus, Novo Nordisk, Thales, etc.). The 2022 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard database will thus allow us to clarify the findings presented in the previous post.

Annual R&D expenditure in 2021 of more than €500 million had 93 European corporations (including 72 corporations from the EU member states). 21 of these corporations were listed by Patsnap among the world's top 100 innovators in 2023. Of these 93 European industrial corporations, 13 had annual R&D expenditures of more than €5 billion and another 35 between €1 and €4.9 billion (see the attached table).

Among the 93 European industrial corporations with the highest annual R&D expenditure, corporations from Germany (23) and France (18) dominate. German corporations focus on the automotive (8 corporations - Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Robert Bosch, Continental, ZF, Schaeffler, Mahle) and pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries (4 corporations - Bayer, Boehringer Sohn, Merck DE, Biontech). The French corporations focus on the automotive (4 corporations - Renault, Valeo, Faurecia, Michelin) and aerospace and defence (3 - Thales, Safran, Dassault Aviation). 11 corporations were reported by the United Kingdom and 10 each by the Netherlands and Switzerland.

For reading the whole text, please, go on the website of Horizon Europe.

Author: Vladimír Vojtěch, vojtech@tc.cz, TC Prague, 20.02.2024