Prime Minister meets European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva

Bulgaria works to consolidate its position in Europe’s reindustrialization and to develop an innovative high value-add economy. This was stated by Prime Minister Rumen Radev at his meeting with the European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva. The Prime Minister gave prominence to Bulgarian’s ambition for industrial and technological convergence within the European Union and for ensuring equal access of smaller member states to the resources of the new European Competitiveness Fund (ECF).

The ECF is one of the main pillars of the European Union’s Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and seeks to help overcome Europe’s innovation gap vis-à-vis leading global competitors, decrease strategic dependencies and improve the competitiveness of the European economy.

In this context, European Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva stressed the need for the European Union to generate more friendly conditions for the development of innovative companies in Europe so as to restrain the trend for high-tech companies and talents to relocate their operations to markets with more attractive potentials for financing and growth, including the United States of America. As a possible opportunity to that effect Ekaterina Zaharieva noted the establishment of a single capital market in the EU to encourage the funding of Research and Development and to ensure the financing needed for startups.

The major items on the agenda of the meeting, inter alia, were the importance of competitiveness and innovation for the development of Bulgaria, the drawing up of the European Union’s next Multiannual Financial Framework, the future of the Horizon Europe Program and the role of national and regional authorities in building sustainable ecosystems for research, innovation and development of startups.