In the top 1,000 EU companies investing in research and development in 2008, put together by the European Commission, no Romanian business is listed. The country with most companies listed in this particular ranking is Great Britain (247), followed by Germany (209).
Besides Romania, other six EU members, namely Bulgaria, Cypress, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia, are not listed on this chart.
The biggest investments in research and development in 2008 - 5.92 billion euros - have been made by the German group Volkswagen, with the Finnish mobile phones producer Nokia following closely. Nokia spent 5.32 billion euros last year for research and development activities.
The French pharmaceutical group Sanofi-Aventis holds the third position, having made investments worth of 4.60 billion euros, while the German Daimler and Robert Bosch companies rank fourth and fifth wit investments amounting to 4.44 billion euros and 3.91 million euros respectively.
The following five positions belong to Siemens (3.83 billion euros), GlaxoSmithKline (3.83 billion euros), AstraZeneca (3.62 billion euros), AlcatelLucent (3.16 billion euros), Ericsson (2.97 billion euros).
Overall, the 1,000 companies featured in the chart put together by the European Commission have invested 130.41 billion euros in research and development in 2008.
