Few regions are as consistently ranked among Europe’s and the world’s finest innovation environments as Flanders is. But don’t take our word for it! Here are a few prominent examples: 

• 1st in Europe when it comes to the proportion of enterprises with innovation activities (2016 Eurostat Community Survey, published in 2019).
• 2nd within the EU for innovation linkages (2019 European Innovation Scoreboard). This means that SMEs in Flanders have great in-house innovation capacities and excel in setting up effective joint projects. It also refers to private players in Flanders co-funding public R&D expenditures, which indicates great public-private cooperation.
• 3rd-best innovative system in the world (2020 ZEW Innovationsindikator).
• 6th-best research system in the EU (2019 European Innovation Scoreboard). 
• 14th-most innovative economy around the globe (2019 Bloomberg Innovation Index).

Flanders’ five universities – in Antwerp (UAntwerpen), Brussels (VUB), Ghent (UGent), Hasselt (UHasselt) and Leuven (KU Leuven) – are among the world’s most innovative and outstanding. Not only do they generate the majority of the region’s non-private scientific output, they also feature consistently in the top 100 of most-innovative universities published annually by international news firm Reuters.

• KU Leuven is Europe’s most innovative university and number 7 worldwide (Reuters, 2019).
• UGent is number 48 in Europe and 98 worldwide (Reuters, 2019).
• VUB and UAntwerpen rank 59th and 93rd in Europe, respectively (Reuters, 2019).

In Flanders, your innovative company can benefit from an array of tax credits, grants and other incentives for your R&D-related investments.

• Innovation income deduction – up to 85% of your company’s net innovation income is exempt from corporate taxation.
• R&D investment deduction – up to 13.5% of the investment value (at once) or 20.5% on the annual depreciations (staggered).
• R&D payroll tax incentive – up to 80% of payroll withholding tax paid on professional income for researchers and academic personnel can be recovered.
• Structural grants and funding for R&D projects are provided through government agency Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
• Expatriate tax status in R&D allows tax-free expatriation.

Innovation is big business in Flanders – and the figures confirm it. The region ranks among the biggest R&D spenders in Europe and even around the globe:

• Number 11 worldwide for gross expenditure on R&D (WIPO’s 2019 Global Innovation Index).
• Number 6 in Europe for R&D intensity measured as gross domestic expenditure on R&D (Eurostat’s 2019 Europe 2020 Indicators).

According to the Center for R&D Monitoring (ECOOM), Belgium – of which Flanders is the northern region – spent 2.92% of its GDP on R&D in 2020. This is significantly higher than the European average of 2.0%.