Each record describes something a country built that the indicators do not capture. The source provides the published number; the mechanism is our interpretation.
Scores describe outcomes. These records describe how a country acted, what it needed and what happened. 863 of 863 records include a mechanism. They do not affect scores.
Bulgaria's Ministry of Transport signed a concession on 10 September 2006 that gave Fraport Twin Star, a German-Bulgarian company 60 percent owned by Fraport, the operation of the state airports at Varna and Burgas, and the two airports served 3.7 million passengers in 2025.
The Ministry of Transport kept ownership of two Black Sea airports and tendered their operation and investment as one long concession, so a private operator carries traffic risk and capital spending while the state collects concession fees and keeps the assets.
Preconditions
Seasonal tourist traffic large enough to make two regional airports bankable as a pair
A concession law and a ministry able to run, and after a court challenge rerun, an international tender
An experienced airport operator willing to hold traffic risk for decades
Limits: The number is the concessionaire reporting on itself, rounded to 3.7 million, and no official statistical series was checked against it. The concession start and the 60 percent Fraport share come from a second page, Fraport's company listing (fraport.com, Fraport Twin Star Airport Management AD), which gives the term as 40 years while other sources say 35. Passenger counts show the traffic the airports handled, which depends mostly on tourism demand and airline decisions, not on what the public and private partners delivered together; the record carries no figure for investment delivered, service quality or payments to the state. The release names a runway rehabilitation at Burgas worth over 50 million euros but does not say it was completed. This is one concession for two regional airports run by a multinational, not a national programme, and the tier is generous for an operator's press release.
๐ง๐ฌBulgariasince 2018still operatingbears on University-industry collaboration
Bulgaria's Operational Programme Science and Education for Smart Growth established 16 Centres of Excellence and Centres of Competence, led by universities and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences institutes, with 215 million euros of ERDF support, and by 2023 they reported 257 joint research projects with business against a target of 150.
The education ministry's managing authority used cohesion funds to build research centres in the smart specialisation areas, set an output target for joint projects with business, and then made 2021-2027 funding depend on each centre's business plan.
Preconditions
Cohesion funding large enough to build infrastructure the national budget could not
Universities and Academy institutes able to run multi-partner centres
Firms with a research need the centres can serve, which the evaluation found was the weak link
Limits: The figure is the managing authority's own report of its programme, read from a slide in a conference presentation, not from a published monitoring report. The slide does not define a joint research project, give their value or say how many firms took part, so 257 could include small service contracts. Several centres are led by Academy of Sciences institutes rather than universities. The same presentation cites a 2021 JRC strategic evaluation that found the centres strongly focused on research excellence and less on commercialisation, with technology transfer still relatively limited. About 75 percent of the 2014-2020 money went to research infrastructure. The centres continue under the 2021-2027 Research, Innovation and Digitalisation programme with 168 million euros, which is the basis for the operating status.
Bulgaria's Employment Agency (Agentsia po zaetostta) included more than 155,450 unemployed and employed adults in training in 2025, against just over 87,540 in 2024, with 97,911 people certified through digital skills vouchers financed under the national Recovery and Resilience Plan.
The national employment agency issues training vouchers to unemployed, inactive and employed adults, who choose a licensed provider, and pays the provider on completion, with EU recovery and social funds paying for most of the volume.
Preconditions
A register of licensed vocational training providers under the national VET agency
An online voucher application system run through the labour offices
EU funding lines (RRF, ESF+) large enough to pay for courses at national scale
Limits: The agency reports on itself, and the cited URL is a zip archive from the agency's 'Otchet za deynostta na AZ' page holding two PDFs; the headline counts are on page 81 of the 84-page text volume (Otchet_Plan za deistvie_2025_text.pdf), and both are stated as 'over' and 'just over', so they are rounded. The 2025 jump is mostly vouchers: 97,911 people certified in basic and advanced digital skills under component 2 of investment C1.I3 of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (page 34), and 22,140 employed people trained under the ESF+ project for employed workers; much of the money is EU, though the agency delivers it. Digital skills courses can be short and online, the counts mix enrolment and certification, and one person may appear in more than one scheme. Training for the registered unemployed is far smaller: 6,705 unemployed people were included in training under the programmes and measures of the national employment action plan (page 17). The RRF component ends with the facility in 2026, so 2025 is unlikely to be a stable level. The 2002 start is the year of the Employment Promotion Act under which the agency trains adults, not read at the source.
Bulgaria's National Social Security Institute paid employers 60 percent of the wages and contributions of staff kept on during the COVID-19 emergency under Council of Ministers Decree No. 55 of 2020, starting with 68 employers and 1,065 employees on 15 April 2020, and by 4 March 2021 the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy reported BGN 884 million paid under the measure and 300,000 jobs kept.
The Council of Ministers decreed that the social security fund would pay 60 percent of wages and contributions for workers whose employers kept them on, with the employer paying the other 40 percent, and the Employment Agency approved applications that the social security institute then paid and published employer by employer.
Preconditions
Monthly employer declarations to the social security institute that identified each insured worker
An Employment Agency able to process employer applications in county offices
A social security fund with the liquidity to pay employers before the budget was revised
Where else it has been used: A short-time work design of the German type with a fixed state share; Bulgaria's distinctive move was publishing every paid employer by name, which made the scheme auditable by the public.
Limits: The BGN 884 million and the 300,000 jobs are a minister's statement on the ministry's own site, with no breakdown; 'jobs kept' is the number of supported positions, not a counterfactual estimate of jobs saved. The start figures are our sums from the National Social Security Institute's first payment list (nssi.bg, 'Izplateni kompensatsii po PMS No. 55 ot 2020 g.', file pms55_15042020.xls: 68 employers, 1,065 persons, BGN 274,274), one of 45 lists the Institute published to December 2021; one of them (14 May 2020) is truncated at the source and cannot be read, so we do not give a total from the lists. Speed was modest: the ministry reported only 643 employer applications covering 7,231 employees in late April 2020 (mlsp.government.bg, '643 zayavleniya ot rabotodateli sa postapili po skhemata 60/40'), and uptake grew through May and June. The decree date and the date of the emergency declaration are not on the pages opened, so the record times the response from the first payment, not from the shock.
๐ง๐ฌBulgariasince 2014delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery
The Ministry of Environment and Water, through Operational Programme Environment 2014-2020, funded 18 flood and landslide risk contracts, which by 18 October 2024 reported flood-protection measures benefiting more than 2,130,000 residents, 103 areas with prevented flood risk, six flood-preparedness centres, the BG-ALERT cell-broadcast warning system and a population early-warning system in 11 administrative regions.
The Ministry of Environment and Water, as managing authority, ring-fenced a priority axis of an EU-funded programme for flood and landslide risk and channelled it through direct grants to the civil-protection directorate of the Ministry of Interior and competitive grants to municipalities, so warning systems and local protection works were built under one monitored budget.
Preconditions
Access to EU cohesion funding with a dedicated risk-prevention priority and a national co-financing share
A civil-protection directorate and municipalities able to prepare, procure and run projects to EU audit rules
Flood-risk maps and plans under the EU Floods Directive to select where measures go
Limits: The managing authority reports on its own programme, and the figures sit on one slide of a monitoring-committee presentation (PDF page 7), with no list of projects, no method and no breakdown by area. The same presentation marks its water results as not final, with final reporting due by 15 February 2027, and nothing on the risk slide says those values are final either. 'Residents benefiting' counts people living in areas where measures were built, not avoided losses or reduced flood damage, and the 103 areas are not defined on the slide. The money is mainly EU Cohesion Fund: the Ministry of Environment and Water's 2015 programming presentation gives EUR 50 million of Union support against about EUR 8.8 million of national co-financing for the flood axis, so the delivery is Bulgarian institutions spending a mostly external budget. The slide does not show how the warning systems perform in a real event: in April 2025, as reported by The Sofia Globe (https://sofiaglobe.com/2025/04/30/bulgarias-pm-orders-get-bg-alert-system-working/), the Prime Minister cited the lack of a warning during recent floods and ordered ministries to present a plan for BG-ALERT within 10 days. The early-warning system covers 11 administrative regions, not the whole country.
Bulgaria's Road Infrastructure Agency rehabilitated national roads under a EUR144 million project approved in June 2007, but after budget cuts in 2010 cancelled three lots on about 87 km where works had not started, reducing the length from 450 km to 307 km, and closed in June 2013, two years late, at EUR97.1 million, 67 percent of the appraisal estimate.
The road agency contracted nine regional rehabilitation lots on a loan, then, when the national budget could not cover its co-financing and payments, cancelled the lots not yet started and stretched the rest over two more years.
Preconditions
Co-financing from a national budget exposed to a fiscal shock
Contracts signed before the budget for their full duration was secured
A lender willing to restructure and extend rather than close
Limits: The figures are the World Bank's, from a completion report on its own loan, which reproduces the agency's own implementation report as an annex. The 450 to 307 km reduction and the cancelled lots are in section 1.6 (printed page 4); the costs in Annex 1 (page 19); the original and revised closing dates on the datasheet. Spending fell because scope was cut, not because works came in cheap, so the 67 percent is a measure of a shrunken programme, not of savings. The cause the report names is the government's fiscal restraint after the 2008 to 2009 crisis, with 2010 budget funds spent on 2009 obligations, and only 8 to 9 percent of the loan disbursed by mid-2009. These are rehabilitation lots on existing class I to III roads, not a new motorway, and the record says nothing about the EU-funded motorways built in the same years.
๐ง๐ฌBulgariasince 2008dismantledbears on Large project delivery
Bulgaria's state utility NEK ordered long-lead reactor equipment for the Belene nuclear plant from Atomstroyexport in 2008. The project was cancelled before any unit was completed, and on 6 December 2016 the Ministry of Energy transferred 601,617,133 euros to NEK so it could pay the damages awarded against it in ICC arbitration case 18086/GZ/MHM.
601,617,133 EUR, state financial assistance transferred to nek to pay the belene arbitration award to atomstroyexport, 2016-12-06. 1,400,000,000 BGN, costs incurred on the belene construction to date, as stated by the minister of energy, 2016. Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Bulgaria, press release of 6 December 2016, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
NEK, the state utility, ordered long-lead reactor equipment from a single foreign vendor in 2008 before financing or a final contract price was settled. The government cancelled the project in 2012, the Ministry of Energy advanced NEK repayable assistance in 2016 to pay the vendor's arbitration claim, and the project was revived in 2018.
Preconditions
A state utility allowed to commit to equipment orders before the project's financing was closed
Political control of the decision that changed with each government
A single-vendor contract enforceable in international arbitration
Limits: Belene never produced electricity, so this record documents a delivery that failed before it operated, not a capability that eroded. The headline number is a termination cost, the arbitration damages for equipment ordered in 2008, and not a cost overrun against a budget: the record carries no official baseline budget or schedule for the 2008 phase. The 1.4 billion leva of costs incurred comes from a minister speaking in a television interview. The ministry republished the transcript without a printed date; the 2016 year is inferred from the special assistance law the interview discusses. It is not an audited figure. The project was decided in April 2005, cancelled in March 2012, and revived by a National Assembly decision of 7 June 2018 and a Council of Ministers decision of 29 June 2018. Later decisions on the site and the equipment are not covered by these sources. The 601.6 million euros was advanced to NEK as repayable assistance, not a grant, so the final fiscal loss is not shown here. The later disposal or reuse of the equipment the payment bought is not covered.