Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev says that Bulgaria will emphasise human resources development in its use of European funds.

He was speaking in Brussels on September 27, the day the European Commission (EC) released to Bulgaria the first tranche of close to a billion euro from the European Fund for Regional Development (EDRF) that is to cover 2007 to 2013.

Stanishev said that during this period, the Bulgarian Association of National Authorities would be one of the biggest beneficiaries of European Union cohesion funds. It was expected that by the end of the year, the association would get up to seven billion euro in assistance from the EU. This would be distributed among seven operational programmes.

The biggest challenge for the Government was to decide where to invest the funds. Given the experience of long-standing members of the EU, the choice was between infrastructure and human resources development. Given that standards of living in some regions of Bulgaria could be half that of other regions, "one cannot exactly ignore infrastructure".

Stanishev said that the Government had decided to put the emphasis on HR development.

"I believe (this) will lead to higher employment, especially when we face serious demographic challenges, including a low birth rate, and social and ethnic inclusion."

He said that Bulgaria needed to think how to develop qualified staff. The exodus of qualified people in the early 1990s had led to there being large Bulgarian "diasporas" around the world, for example the 100 000 Bulgarians living in Chicago. There was no sign that these people would return, because Bulgaria could not offer them similar opportunities.

Stanishev said that human resources development was not only about education and improving labour skills, but also about eventually achieving a higher quality of life in the country.

However, unlike Poland and Lithuania, which have recently promoted in Brussels their programmes and efforts to make qualified expatriates return, Stanishev did not commit to similar efforts, implying that for the time being his Government's efforts were directed towards training young people to work in designated areas of economic development of the country.

"We want to train people for the areas of economic development, which fit into Bulgaria's expertise and tradition in certain areas, including ICT, bio-technology, life-science, energy-saving technology and electronics," he said.

To achieve results in these areas, the Bulgarian Government would need to provide incentives for businesses to build links with the scientific community, which was of paramount importance for the country's development.

Stanishev said that the new EU member states had brought a great adaptability to the EU. When the EC was rethinking its social cohesion policy for the period from 2013 onwards, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe could help develop the future model because "no model lasts forever," Stanishev said.

He said that although Bulgaria had only nine months of experience in the EU, his view was that the EU's social cohesion policy might need tactical rather than strategic change.

"Europe competitiveness depends on energy security and diversity, but Bulgaria imports 70 per cent of its resources to produce energy, thus spending 20 per cent of its GDP to every year, because of the closure of four safe nuclear plants over the past few years."

Stanishev said that during the 1970s, energy efficiency was not a priority consideration in Bulgaria. This had led to the country being less competitive, especially in the energy sector, which relied heavily on nuclear power.

He said that the closure of four nuclear plants in Bulgaria to satisfy EU accession requirements had been avoidable, especially when the International Atomic Energy Agency has approved the safety standards at Kozloduy nuclear power station, and only a few EU member countries had insisted on the closure of the plants.

The EU needed to develop its own coherent policy on nuclear energy safety, so that economic interests of countries producing nuclear power were taken into consideration, especially when nuclear power was a major way to deal with climate change challenges.

Stanishev that the three operational programmes that would benefit from the first grant from the ERDF would include human resources development, administrative capacity building and competitiveness.

Forty million euro in funds that will be used for the competitiveness programme would be transferred to Bulgaria within two weeks, he said. These would be used modernisation of start-ups, as well as the introduction of international standards in their operations. 

The fund allocation for the outstanding four operational programmes, including transport, technical assistance, regional development and environment, will happen by the end of the year. Bulgaria is expected to receive a total of 998 million euro in total from the EFRD and 175 million for projects that have been co-funded with Bulgarian partners, amounting to a total of 1. 162 billion euro by the end of the year.