Europeanisation and domestic change : the effects of EU regional policy in Bulgaria

Based on the Europeanization and the misfit concepts, the study is looking on the transformation of the Bulgarian governance and policy in the field of regional development, resulting from the EU accession conditionality and the EU regional development policy (after the country became a member of the EU). The study is looking to answer three main questions. What is changing as a result of the adaptation pressures coming from the EU? What are the mechanisms of change? Is it possible to describe the change as multi-level governance? In order to give a detailed answer to the questions the study is looking at the changing role of three sets of actors - the central government, the local authorities and the non-state actors in order to find out how the adaptation pressures coming from the EU are leading to changes in each of these levels, as well as in their role in the implementation of the EU regional policy in Bulgaria. The study is also comparing Bulgaria with two similar EU-15 countries (Greece and Ireland) and the central and East- European countries that joined the EU in 2004. The study argues that even though Bulgaria had to undergo significant changes in order to respond to the requirements of the Copenhagen criteria in the field of the EU regional policy, these changes have in fact strengthened the control of the Bulgarian central government over the policy formulation and implementation process, despite the initial attempts of the European Commission to promote decentralization and multi-level governance in the candidate countries of the fifth enlargement.