The "Chicken Littles" of Eurocompetitiveness are clucking in despair. The latest research shows that yet again, American and Asian companies have boosted their rates of research and development spending even as Europe's own innovation investment has gone flat. Brussels' growth-oriented Eurocrats are getting nervous.

The good news is that Germany's own DaimlerChrysler topped the UK Department of Trade and Industry's "international research and development scoreboard" with reported annual R&D spending of $7.69bn (£4.4bn). The bad news is that the DTI survey confirmed that Europe's aggregate corporate R&D investment has not budged in four years. Worse yet, Europe ranked last in the key global benchmark of "R&D intensity" - R&D spending as a percentage of sales. While US companies invested an average 4.5 per cent of sales in R&D and Japan's spend averaged 4 per cent, Europe's R&D intensity petered out at a lowly 3.3 per cent. You can almost hear the Eurocrats crying: "The innovation is falling! The innovation is falling!"