The European Commission presented the R&D Scoreboard that shows that despite the continuing economic and financial crisis, major EU-based firms continue to rely on R&D for their competitive edge. In addition, R&D-intensive sectors tended to show above average employment growth.

Among the main findings of the European Commission's 2012 "EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard" of the top 1500 global R&D investors, major EU-based increased R&D investment by 8.9% in 2011, up from 6.1% in 2010. The increase nearly matches US firms (9%), beats the global average (7.6%) and is far ahead of Japanese companies (1.7%). In 2010 EU companies lag much behind in R&D investments compared to global competitors, as reported the R&D Scoreboard published in 2011.

The R&D Scoreboard also highlights that companies showing the largest R&D expenditure increases among the top 100 are in the ICT sector, such as Huawei (48.4%), Apple (36.3%) and STMicroeleectronics (34.5%). Other companies in the top 100 with large jumps in their levels of R&D investment are from the automobile and parts sectors, some based in the EU such as BMW (21.6%) and Renault (19.4%).

In the EU, R&D growth figures in 2011 are to a large extent driven by the automobile sector (16.2% growth), which accounts for the biggest share of R&D investment in the EU (25%). Companies based in Germany, which account for around one third of the EU's total private R&D investment, increased R&D by 9.5%. Companies in the UK and France, which also account for a large proportion of private research, had growth of 13.1% and 7.6% respectively.