Czech R&D expenditures amounted to CZK 85.1bn in 2014, which is an increase by 10% (CZK 7.3bn) year-on-year, Czech Statistical Office informed on 15 October. The intensity of R&D, i.e. share of the expenditures on GDP reached the level of 2% for the first time. In the past three years, private sector businesses invested two times more funds into R&D than universities and three times more than public research institutions. In 2012-2014, 15% of R&D financing was covered by the EU funds. Overall expenditures on R&D in the South-Moravian innovation hub - town of Brno - grew by 15.6% year-on-year in 2014, which is a 100% increase compared with 2010. Prague still dominates Czech R&D and innovation fields, but the innovation dynamics of Brno is larger than that of the capital city. Read more details.

Find out more on indirect promotion of R&D, innovation via tax deductions. Click on an article on cooperation between the public and the private sectors. Read also about recently published plans of the European Commission on R&D funding over the next two years.

Also, the Commission launched an initiative to improve the synergies between EU funding for regional policy and for research.

According to the Eurostat Regional Yearbook 2015, the region with the highest R&D intensity in the Czech Republic is the Jihovýchod NUTS region (gross domestic expenditure on R&D amounts to 2.6% of GDP). The Czech region with the lowest expenditure on R&D is the Severozápad region (0.4% of GDP).