EU Presidency Puts Lagging Bulgarian Science in the Spotlight

In January, Bulgaria took over the EU presidency. At a time when the country wants to highlight its achievements in becoming a modern European country its research languishes at near the bottom in European rankings, writes chemistryworld.com

Today, Bulgarian science subsists on starvation rations, with public research funding around a paltry 0.22% of GDP for the last five years - approximately €100 million (£89 million) - among the lowest in the EU28. Its scientific publication performance lags behind comparator countries such as Romania, Hungary and Slovakia too. Meanwhile, private sector R&D expenditure ticked up to 1% of GDP in 2015, up from 0.6% in 2012, thanks to international investment, particularly from industry.

'For years now there have been significant reductions in the research budget, so that last year it fell to 0.21% of GDP,' says Nikolai Denkov, a materials scientist at Sofia University and former minister of science. In the last five to six years, only around €8 million per year was available for grants, and in two of the last five years there wasn't even a funding call, says Denkov. 'This is peanuts,' he adds. 'Such low funding makes it impossible to maintain the research system and to attract young scientists.' Most public money goes to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and agricultural academies to cover basic expenses.

In 2015, the Bulgarian government requested that the European commission support peer review of its science and innovation system. Led by Luc Soete, then chair of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, it recommended that public funding be increased to 1% of GDP and that performance-based funding be adopted. Bulgaria is second to bottom in attracting Horizon 2020 funding.

Last year, Soete...