New Scoreboard Reveals EU Strength in Green Patenting, Yet Slower R&D Growth Than Global Peers

The 2025 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard reveals a mixed picture for Europe’s innovation landscape. While EU companies continue to play a major role in global R&D and intellectual property creation, their overall R&D investment growth in 2024 remained below that of the US and other leading economies. 

The world’s top 2 000 R&D investors spent EUR 1 446 billion on research and development in 2024, representing around 90% of global business-funded R&D. Among them, 318 EU-based firms contributed 16.2 % of total investment, compared to 47.1% from the US and 16.1% from China. Global R&D expenditure grew by 6.3%, while EU companies increased their investment by 2.9% – notably slower than the 7.8% growth seen in the US. 

Innovation performance across Member States reflects broader patterns seen in the European Innovation Scoreboard: firms from innovation leader countries expanded their R&D by 6.8% annually over the past decade, compared with 2.5% for companies in moderate innovator economies. This underlines how national innovation ecosystems and framework conditions remain key to building strong, IP-intensive industries. 

Green patenting: Europe maintains strong global position 

Despite slower R&D growth overall, the EU continues to demonstrate strong performance in green innovation and patenting. Over 2012–2021, international green inventions represented around 12% of all international patenting activity. In cumulative terms, Japan (24%) and the EU (21%) remained the leading sources of international green inventions by the end of the period, while China’s share rose steadily from around 5% to around 15%. 

At Member State level, the Scoreboard highlights different patterns depending on the indicator used. Denmark, Finland and Sweden – all innovation leaders – recorded the highest numbers of international green inventions per capita over 2012–2021, and Denmark also had the highest share of green inventions in overall international patenting activity. Germany and Austria (strong innovators) registered more international green patents per capita than the innovation leader Netherlands. In absolute terms, the largest strong innovators, Germany and France, had the highest numbers of international green patent inventions. 

The Scoreboard identifies several green technology areas where EU patenting remains particularly strong: 

• Energy-intensive industries, maintaining leadership in green patent filings;
• Circularity technologies, with a clear and growing cumulative advantage;
• Clean transport, ranking second globally after Japan but leading in annual filings.
   

However, the Scoreboard notes limited progress in green-and-digital (“twin transition”) inventions, where EU output appears to be stagnating. Collaboration patterns show that EU applicants cooperate most with the US in energy-intensive industries and with China in clean transport and twin patents. 

Overall, the 2025 Scoreboard confirms that while Europe’s R&D growth trails global competitors, its green IP portfolio remains strong, supported by strengths in sustainable technologies and innovation ecosystems in several Member States.