The world’s recent financial meltdown did not hit research spending as hard as might have been expected, according to the EU’s latest investment scoreboard.

R&D investment from the world’s largest spenders on research dropped 1.9% in 2009, the annual publication shows. This ends four years of upwards growth but, given the 1,400 companies in the scoreboard saw sales drop 10.1% and profits drop 21.0%, it looks like research spending was pretty well protected.

American investment dropped 5.1% compared to the EU’s 2.6%. But Research Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn is using the scoreboard release to prod member states to back her recently announced ‘Innovation Union’ proposals.

She warns that lagging behind US companies in software and biotech investments and the growth of Asian spending mean that Europe faces an “innovation emergency”.

Only three of the top ten companies in the scoreboard are from the EU, although another two are in Europe, as both Roche and Novartis call Switzerland home. Japan and South Korea have only one company each in the top ten, with the US taking three spots. Only 16 of the top 50 are in the EU.

Graph – EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard