RESEARCH AND INNOVATION POLICY: TOWARDS SMART SPECIALIZATION FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF BULGARIA

The discussion is about a formation of an smart specialization as a core policy for contemporary economic development of Bulgaria under the accelerating global changes in the applied technologies. The main problem of this policy is defining its purpose, priorities and criteria for their determination within the specific national research and innovation promotion policy, characterizing and estimating the policies, applied in Bulgaria to promote scientific research and innovations during the first programme period 2007 - 2013 from the EU membership of Bulgaria as well as their effect on the innovation performance of the country. The analysis is based on the EC and national framework regulatory documents and on the results of the Operational Programme "Competitiveness" at the end of the programme period. The reliability of the conclusions is achieved by means of various methods of evaluation of the research and innovation promotion policies. It is proven, that the objectives of the current research and innovation policy have not been achieved, mainly due to the lacking scientifically verified national concept on the development of economy, as a result of a deficiency in the economic theory and the inadequate research potential. The concept and the policy has been developed in view of the smart specialization of Foray, that has become a generator of the new EU approach in generating the innovation policy during the second programme period until 2020, applied as defined in Regulation (ЕU) 1300/2013. It turned out, that the application of this programme in Bulgaria encountered barriers, that could be overcome by means of nationally based approach. Finally recommendations are defined for targeted policies to promote research and innovation policies for smart specialization for innovative development of the country as well as to update the formulation of objectives in the National Development Programme for the period 2014 - 2020.