The share of EU R&D funding being won by some heavyweight research nations is falling, an analysis has found, making the R&D Framework programme increasingly expensive for those countries.
The informal study, carried out by former European Commission official Peter Fisch and published on his personal website last month, reveals what he called “a somewhat peculiar pattern” in the distribution of EU R&D funding. “Most of the relative winners are comparatively small countries, whereas the larger member states are the biggest losers,” he concluded.
Germany won 18.7 per cent of funding from the seventh Framework programme but only 16.9 per cent from the first three years of current programme Horizon 2020, Fisch found. It won just 15.6 per cent in the second half of 2017, according to his analysis.