Romania, one of lowest ranking countries in EU concerning funds for research and development

Romania allocated only 0.48 percent of its GDP for Research and Development, well below the average of 2.03 percent of the GDP spent at the level of the EU, ranking on the second to last place, before Latvia, according to data published by Eurostat on Wednesday. 

Moreover, Romania ranks second to last in the EU when it comes to the number of people hired in research and development, 0.3707 percent from the EU total active population in 2016. 

The Eurostat report covers other sectors, such as patent applications, where Romania is once again on the second to last place in the EU, with 5.11 patent requests to 1 million people, well below the average of 111.97 patent applications to one million people in the EU. 

The only indicator in which Romania is well above the EU average is the share occupied by railway and internal waters in freight transport, 59.7 percent of the total internal freight transport in Romania, as opposed to 23.6 percent in the EU.