site.btaHead of the EC Representation in Bulgaria: Commission Must Find Funds, Decide Where to Invest

The efforts of the new European Commission (EC) will focus on finding answers to two key questions to unlock the EU's technological potential, said Yordanka Chobanova, Head of the EC Representation in Bulgaria, in her address to the participants in the 20th edition of the National Innovation Forum organized by the Applied Research and Communications Fund here on Tuesday. The first question is related to securing funds for investments, and the second one is where these investments should be directed.

Chobanova specified that the Second von der Leyen Commission will try to change the current situation where the EU is lagging in the production and application of new technologies. The status quo could bring not only technological lag and missed financial benefits but new technologies that are left unregulated, Chobanova warned.

A leading measure to change the status quo, according to Chobanova, will be the mobilization of investment through accumulated savings and through private capital, which, in her words, today is being redirected outside Europe, mainly to the US. "The aim is to complete the Capital Markets Union. This is the European plan to facilitate the flow of money between countries in the same way that goods and services move," she added.

On the question of where the funds should be invested, Chobanova reported on a new initiative that has been proposed by EC President Ursula von der Leyen about the establishment of a new EU legal status of Innovative European Company. The Commissioner added: "The benefits are a single digital identity for companies, access to a simpler harmonized set of rules and a universal EU-wide credit rating."

Ognian Shentov, Chair of the Applied Research and Communications Fund Board of Trustees and Norbert Beckmann-Dierkes, Head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Representation in Bulgaria, also addressed the forum participants. Beckmann-Dierkes said that the prospect of Bulgaria becoming a global digital economy is being underestimated.