Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 26th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview IV. Regional Development and Inter-regional Author(s) Elena Kalfova Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia Bulgaria Title Quality of Governance and EU Regional Policy. Evidence from Bulgaria. File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Elena Kalfova Abstract Economic convergence between the regions of the European Union (EU) and fostering regional economic growth is a major political goal since 1975. Currently more than one third of the total EU budget is spent on achieving the purpose. This fact proves the importance of economic convergence. The economic crisis of recent years and the inevitable reforms in the EU more sharply put the question for effectiveness of regional policy and the methods for its evaluation as a focal one. A number of studies have been conducted in recent years in this direction, applying many different approaches and reaching dissimilar results. However, no consensus has been reached among political and scientific circles either on the effectiveness of EU regional policy or on the key factors that drives it. Meanwhile, the issues of quality of public governance and its importance for the development and implementation of regional policy have been widely explored. Enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe offers new opportunities to explore the effectiveness of EU regional policy and the importance of quality of public governance to achieve its goals. This paper explores the implementation of EU regional policy in Bulgaria, aiming to highlight the importance of the quality of public governance for the effectiveness of the applied policy. The main hypothesis is that the quality of public governance is a key factor for the success / failures of the regional policy. The hypothesis is verified through regression model using both macroeconomic and public governance assessment variables for the period 2007 – 2016. The result of the modelling evaluates the impact of quality of public governance as a factor for regional policy effectiveness. It is assumed that results can be used from practitioners as a recommendations to improve the quality of the regional policy evaluation in Bulgaria. Possible implication from the analysis is supporting creation of coherent system for regional policy evaluation in other CEE countries.
