Romania has the lowest budget allocation for research compared to EU countries

With an annual budget of only 0.38% of GDP allocated to scientific research expenditure, Romania ranks at the bottom of the European countries in 2023, according to the latest infographic published by the Social Monitor, a project of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Romania.

Romania's budget for financing research and development activities has gradually decreased since 2021 (0.41% of GDP) and 2022 (0.35% of GDP), reaching a budget allocation of only 0.38% in 2023. Romania is surpassed by all countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Bulgaria (0.58%), Hungary (0.63%), Slovakia (0.76%), Slovenia (1.35%), Lithuania (1.01%), and is considerably behind Western European countries, Germany (2.18%), Denmark (1.86%), the Netherlands (1.85%), Finland (1.54%), and Sweden (1.46%). Expenditures on research and development activities are analyzed from the perspective of government allocation, calculated as a percentage of GDP.

Regarding the situation of researchers working in both public research and development and higher education institutions in Romania and in the private sector, according to the data, in 2022 there were only 29,837 researchers, of whom 16,078 were men and 13,759 were women. To further analyze employment in the research and development sector, an important indicator used by EUROSTAT is the employment rate for this sector of activity, calculated as a percentage of total employment for each EU member country. Researchers are a professional category of employees who are involved in activities related to the creation of scientific knowledge through the development of new concepts, theories, analysis models, or analysis and research methods and techniques.

Despite the increase in the total number of researchers in the European Union, the data show that Romania lags behind, with the lowest employment in the research and development sector among EU countries. Romania has the lowest number of researchers per million inhabitants and the lowest percentage of total employment (0.25% in 2022 and 0.27% in 2023) compared to all EU countries. Thus, according to EUROSTAT, Romania ranks at the bottom of the list in terms of researcher employment, with most of them working in the government sector.

Our country ranks even behind island countries such as Malta (0.43%) and Cyprus (0.34%) in terms of the percentage of researchers employed. Neighboring countries Bulgaria (0.58%) and Hungary (0.97%) also surpassed Romania in terms of the number of researchers. Furthermore, Eastern European countries such as Lithuania (0.77%), Poland (0.85%), the Czech Republic (1%), and Estonia (1%) were significantly ahead of our country.

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Data processing and text design: Delia Bădoi

Infographic: Pascalone Media SRL

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