Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

Fig. 1-11: R&D expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product (GPD) 2011 and 2018*
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
SW
E
AU
T
DEU
DN
K
BE
L
FIN
FR
A
NL
D
SV
N
CZ
E
GBR
Ø E
U-2
8
HU
N
ES
T
ITA
PRT
ES
P
LU
X
PO
L
GRC
IRL
HRV
LT
U
SV
K
US
A*
*
R&
D e
xp
en
di
tu
re i
n % o
f G
DP
2011
2018
EU Member States
Reference countries
* Country data not available for the reference years: CHE, CHN, CAN, AUS, BRA, ZAF.
** Last available data selected (2017).
Source: Eurostat (2020). Graphic: iit. The 2018 data are provisional.

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32
Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
Fig. 1-12: Breakdown of R&D expenditure by source of funds, 2017*
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
LV
A*
*
HRV
LU
X
PRT
ES
T
ES
P
CY
P
PO
L
GRC
LT
U
RO
U
SV
K
CZ
E
Ø E
U-2
8
FR
A
ITA
HU
N***
NL
D
M
LT
FIN
DE
U***
AU
T
DN
K
SW
E
BG
R
SV
N
IRL
BE
L
CH
E
US
A
CH
N**
/***
EU Member States
Reference countries
in
%
Public sector (excl. higher education institutions)
Business enterprise sector
Higher education sector
Private non-profit sector
Abroad
* Country data not available for the reference year: BGR, CYP, HRV, IRL, MLT, AUS, BRA, ZAF.
** No data available for the reference year in the “Private non-profit sector” category.
*** No data available for the reference year in the “Higher education sector” category.
Source: Eurostat (2020). Graphic: iit.
search intensity is a key political priority, primarily on 
account of the European target for countries to be 
spending three percent of their total annual econom-
ic output on R&D by 2020. Whereas the EU as a 
whole is missing this target by some margin, Austria 
has hit it consistently since 2014. 
Fig. 1-12 shows the make-up of Austria’s R&D ex-
penditure in an international comparison, broken 
down into the following sources of funding: the pub-
lic sector (excluding higher education institutions), 
the higher education sector, the business enterprise 
sector and the private non-profit sector as well as 
funding from abroad. The various funding percentag-
es by sector are presented as a stacked bar chart, 
meaning that the total expenditures for each country 
add up to 100% in each case. 
Adding together funding from the business enter-
prise sector and abroad reveals that these two sec-
tors accounted for a total of 68.8% of Austria’s fund-
24 Ibid.
ing in 2017, above the EU-28 average. In terms of the 
country’s RTI strategy, this figure is in line with or 
higher than the target level of obtaining two thirds 
of funding from the private sector.
24
However, fund-
ing from the Austrian business enterprise sector – i.e. 
excluding funding from abroad – stands at 55% and 
is thus below the target set in the RTI strategy. Nev-
ertheless, it must be borne in mind in this regard 
that, in particular, a few research-intensive compa-
nies in Austria are subsidiaries of multinational cor-
porations and that their research is funded on an in-
tragroup basis via international payment flows. The 
very fact that significant funding flows into Austrian 
(companies’) research from abroad thus demon-
strates the country’s performance capacity as a cen-
tre for research. Something else to consider is the 
fact that tax incentives for research are now classi-
fied as funds of the entity engaging in R&D – i.e. 
mostly the companies – due to new rules in the sur-

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