Luxembourg to spend €300 million more on research work

Luxembourg plans to pump hundreds of millions in new spending into finding discoveries in sustainable development, medicine and other fields after criticism it was lagging in research spending.

The Grand Duchy set to increase research funding by nearly €300 million to €1.7 billion overall starting next year through 2025, the government said on Thursday. That would be a 17% over the previous three years, the government said in a press release.

The new spending could create 580 additional positions in public research, the government said.

The Chambre de Commerce, the country's main business lobby, three months ago bemoaned a decline in research and development spending in relation to the Grand Duchy's gross domestic product. Luxembourg is Europe's richest country, with the highest gross domestic product per capita, but spends less on research and development than the EU average.   

The Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) is set to benefit from the largest relative increase at close to 26%, or €62 million. The largest nominal increase will see the University of Luxembourg get more than €908 million over the three-year period, an increase of close to 17% compared to the three years before.

The Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) are also receiving more. So is the National Research Fund (FNR), which funds research projects domestically and abroad.

Prioritised areas for research funding are digitisation, data science, sustainable development, climate, energy and medicine, the government said. The research can also involve joint projects between the institutes, as happens regularly between them already.

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