Where is Bulgaria after 5 years of EU membership?
The representation of the European Commission in Bulgaria and the Center for Economic Development (CED) organized a conference today on theme: “5 years EU membership of Bulgaria and competitiveness of the Bulgarian economy” on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Bulgaria’s EU accession in the context of the economic recovery of Europe.
The Ambassador of the Kingdom of Denmark in our country H.E. Kaare Janson, the Minister of European Funds Management Tomislav Donchev, representatives of the NGOs, the business, the academic circles and diplomatic corps attended the event.
By mid 2013, the texts of the Operational Programmes for the period 2014–2020 must be ready, Minister Donchev announced. According to him, the sectoral and not the regional principle will be used in the next programme period.
The Center for Economic Development presented data on the assessment of the competitiveness of Bulgarian business. Bulgaria is one of the few European countries which improved their results – from 4% in 2006 to 4.23% in 2011.
According to the report on the competitive advantages and disadvantages of Bulgaria at the World Economic Forum, the country has a number of advantages, but shortcomings prevail. Macroeconomic stability, favourable tax policy, openness of the economy and participation of Bulgarian companies in international production chains are among the positive features noted by the Center for Economic Development, together with the realization on the part of the business of the need to implement innovative solutions in practice.
Some of the flaws mentioned by CED are the poor quality of infrastructure, the inefficiency of Bulgarian institutions, the worsening quality of the labour force, existing corruption practices in the country, the lack of clearly formulated goals and strategies by companies.
“As a whole membership in the European Union has had more benefits on Bulgaria than negative effects. These results would have been much better if the suggestions of the business to improve the economic environment had been taken into account, especially regarding administration, corruption, the court system and EU funds absorption”, said the President of BCCI Tsvetan Simeonov, who also took part in the conference.
