IMPACT OF THE EUROPEAN FUNDS ON BULGARIA’S ECONOMIC GROWTH AND OF THE NMS-11’S ECONOMIC GROWTH AS A GROUP

The purpose of this study is to analyze the short-term and long-term relationship between European funds and economic growth in the new member states (NMS-11) as a group and Bulgaria in particular in the period 2014-2020. The influence of EU funding on the economies of NMS and Bulgaria has been assessed through a methodology based on Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The research results imply that, as a public investment, the absorbed EU funds affect the economic growth of the NMS – 11 in the short term, but not in the long term. The analysis of the relationship between economic growth and the EU funds absorbtion rate in Bulgaria indicate that there is a short-term positive but not long-term impact of the absorbed EU funds on the growth rate of real GDP.