Abstract

This paper is both analytical and policy oriented and examines regional development in Bulgaria. The paper focuses on three of the six regions of Bulgaria: BG31 Severozapaden (North-West), BG33 Severoiztochen (North-East) and BG42 Yuzhen Tsentralen (South-Central) and provides an analytical framework that could be further deepened with future research. The analytical part of the paper identifies four different development-enabling sets of factors and analyses them in each of the three focus regions. The identified four development-enabling sets of factors can be referred to as:

1. Internal Private: socio-economic region-specific characteristics such as demographic structure and migration, labour market and labour costs, sectoral specialisation, productivity and business concentration, infrastructural and transport facilities, local governance and local civil society;

2. External Private: Foreign Direct Investment and remittances from Bulgarian workers abroad;

3. External Public: ad hoc European Union financial instruments devoted to regional development such as Structural and Cohesion Funds. Some other financial instruments such as Common Agricultural Policy subsidies and Small and Medium Enterprises development funding also fall into this category;

4. Internal Public: central and local Bulgarian public institutions’ policies for regional development.

Starting from this analysis, the outputs of this research are some suggestions on how central and regional public institutions, as well as civil society and Non-Governmental Organizations, could better use the available funds and instruments to improve the living conditions of the population in the analyzed regions.

Keywords: European Union, Bulgaria, Regional Development, Regional Policy, Structural and Cohesion Funds, Foreign Direct Investment, Remittances, Small and Medium Enterprises

JEL Classification: R11 - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, and Changes, F15 - Economic Integration.

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