site.btaPM Zhelyazkov: Bulgarian Business Committed to Energy-Saving Technologies

Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said on Thursday that Bulgarian business is nationally responsible and clearly focused on investing in energy-saving technologies during his participation in the Green Transition Forum 5.0: Competitiveness and Innovation in Central and Eastern European Countries.

The Prime Minister took part in a discussion panel at the forum entitled “Stimulating Clean Industrial Decarbonization – Challenges and Opportunities,” where the main topics among participants were the European Clean Industry Pact, roadmaps for decarbonizing Bulgaria’s heavy industry, raising productivity and boosting the sustainability of trade and supply chains, reducing dependency on countries outside the European Union through local production and securing strategic resources, and initiatives for reducing emissions and increasing the sustainability of industry.

“We must not fall behind in this race,” Zhelyazkov said. “The European Commission’s ambitious programme needs support in every Member State. As a government, we fully support these policies, as well as the package of measures and the action plan for the clean industry deal, the approach, and the existing opportunities. Our role is to translate them into the language of the Bulgarian market,” he added.

Zhelyazkov noted that Europe has reached a standard of living to which much of the world aspires.

He said that when the Green Deal was launched in 2019, with its ambitious aim of carbon neutrality by 2050, it was perceived as part of Europe’s values and its understanding of quality of life—as well as a bold signal about how Europeans view the future of the planet through the lens of their own ambitions. This perspective emerged against the backdrop of financial and migration crises, while the COVID crisis and the war in Europe were yet to come. No one could have foreseen the effect these would have on how we think about virtue and quality of life. As a result, the ambitious targets for neutrality, the circular economy, and renewable energy sources initially sounded attractive, but when combined with crisis upon crisis, they began to divide society and sparked growing criticism from business, Zhelyazkov told forum participants.

For part of Europe’s political elite, these aims were a matter of ideology; for others, they represented a vision of prosperity, innovation and competitiveness, Zhelyazkov said. He stressed the importance of balancing fairness with maintaining competitiveness.

He added this is not a time for dividing society, but for reconciling it around the conviction that all targeted efforts for innovation, new technologies, building strategic autonomy, as well as policies for climate neutrality and decarbonization through more advanced industrialization, truly benefit the public. “These policies exist not despite, but because of the public interest,” Zhelyazkov added.

He said this is not a time for dividing society, but for reconciling it around the conviction that all targeted efforts for innovation, new technologies, building strategic autonomy, as well as policies for climate neutrality and decarbonization through more advanced industrialization, truly benefit the public. These policies exist not despite, but because of the public interest, Zhelyazkov concluded.

More than 3,500 participants from over 30 countries are attending the five-day Green Transition Forum 5.0 at Sofia Event Centre, which runs until June 20. The forum gathers EU commissioners, ministers, MEPs, Nobel Prize laureates and top executives from global companies to discuss a range of topics including energy security, sustainable finance, digitalization, and innovation in the CEE region. Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov, former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta, and Professor Daron Acemoglu—2024 Nobel laureate in Economics—are among the keynote speakers.