Estonia will not shy away from 3 per cent R&D spending target, says Prime Minister
Estonia's Prime Minister Juhan Parts has highlighted the necessity of investing more of the national budget in research and development (R&D). Government expenditure on R&D should reach around one billion Estonian kroons (64 million euro) in 2005, said Mr Parts. Although the country's investment in R&D, currently at 0.83 per cent of GDP, is way below the EU target of three per cent, the Prime Minister also said that his country will not retreat from this target. 'As the first step we should foresee bringing the governmental sector's expenditure to the one per cent level by the year 2010, which basically means directing in each of the following years 200 million kroons additionally towards the financing of this field,' said Mr Parts. Estonia's research priorities - biotechnology, materials science and information technology - are outlined in the strategy paper 'Knowledge-based Estonia'. 'These choices should now be respected more strictly, be clearly defined, and resources should also be directed accordingly,' said the Prime Minister. Mr Parts also called for a higher proportion of the EU's structural funds to be made available for R&D-related projects. 'An additional 100 to 200 million kroons should be directed from the structural funds for research and development in the following years,' he said.
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Estonia