European Semester | Austria

Austria ranks second among Member States on public and private R&D spending but has not yet achieved a matching performance in innovation. In Austria R&D spending as a percentage of GDP amounted to 3.07 % in 2015, the second-highest level in the EU. Austria is also among the EU countries with the strongest increase in R&D intensity since 2000, as a result of increases in both public and business R&D expenditure.  Despite the high overall spending levels, funding of basic research remains low and there is scope to increase excellence in research, a field where Austria scores only near the EU average.

Austria’s performance on innovation outputs leaves room for improvement in some areas.  Since formulating its innovation leadership ambition in 2011, Austria has tabled a multitude of initiatives and programmes but has not yet evaluated their overall effectiveness. In 2011 Austria formulated a comprehensive national strategy to boost the performance of its research and innovation system (Der Weg zum Innovation Leader). There has been a growing number of initiatives in recent years focusing on improving knowledge transfer and cooperation between public research (including research at universities) and business