/ world today news/ Bulgaria does not effectively take advantage of the billions of euros for science in the EU and manages to absorb negligible amounts from them.
The Union has a record budget for science and innovation until 2020 – over 80 billion euros under the Horizon 2020 program, of which 9.6 billion euros have been absorbed by the end of 2015. Against this background, Bulgarian scientists have managed to rank 91 projects for a modest 13,898,848 euros, or 0.15% of all funded projects. “Contribution” to Bulgaria being in the queue has a bunch of ministries and councils that do a deplorable job of coordinating and assisting scientists to participate in the program, reports in tomorrow’s issue of “Now”.
These are the findings of an audit carried out by the Audit Office of the contribution of the “Horizon 2020” program (in the period 01.01.2013-31.12.2015) to Bulgaria’s strategic goals in the field of science and innovation. In the analysis, the experts of the palace made a mess of the departments charged with the coordination of the program.
With the 91 ranked projects, Bulgaria is at the bottom in terms of success rate of project proposals with a share of 4.05 percent. For comparison, the average success rate for all participants in the program is 13.37 percent. Out of a total of 91 ranked projects, the Bulgarian side is the coordinator for only 10 (with a total value of 810,705 euros), and for the rest, the respective teams participate as partners in projects from other countries. Bulgarian scientists and business have managed to rank 42 projects worth 6.6 million euros in the priority area “Public Challenges”, under which health, social, energy, etc. are financed. developments, 16 are the approved projects under the priority “Leading positions in industry” (3.2 million euros), 18 projects worth 2.2 million euros will receive funding under “High achievements in the scientific field”. The Bulgarian projects that have been assessed as eligible under the program are worth 383,213,936 euros, but the vast majority of them have remained unfunded in the competition for the available funds.
The lack of capacity in two ministries and poor coordination have a serious contribution to the performance of Bulgarian companies and scientists, it is understood from the audit of the Audit Chamber. There is no activity in which the conclusion is not overwhelming, except for strategic documents. Regarding the strategies, our country has managed to reflect the various European policies, but the action plans do not have the most important thing – the necessary funding. The management capacity is under all criticism – for a period of two years, the “Science” directorate of the Ministry of Education, which is responsible for the coordination of the program, was headed by 6 people. From the Ministry of Economy, which should be leading, there is no representative in the contact network for the program, which worked on a voluntary basis and ineffectively. The program site has not been updated regularly. Among the serious problems, the tying of the money for salaries on the projects to the level of pay at the relevant university is highlighted, and in this line the new EU member states are seriously disadvantaged compared to the richer countries in the union. A serious minus in our country is the lack of help in the preparation of the projects, as well as the difficulties in obtaining co-financing from the banks for the implementation of the activities.
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