Bulgaria’s accession to the Schengen area and its accession to the euro area will be a key moment for bilateral trade with the neighbouring countries and for the whole EU. This is one of the highlights in an interview of the Minister of Economy and Industry Bogdan Bogdanov for the Greek news agency ANA-MPA.
Bogdan Bogdanov expects exponential growth of bilateral trade between Greece and Bulgaria in the coming years.
In his words, our Schengen membership will free the traffic at the borders and will boost the development of bilateral relations, as well as the improvement of transport connectivity and the development of logistics infrastructure. “The efforts made by our government to include Bulgaria in the Schengen area, hopefully by the end of 2023, will be a key moment for further economic development in the region,” he pointed out.
Speaking to the ANA-MPA, he highlighted
the good opportunities of Bulgaria and Greece
for bilateral investment.
“In the first eight months of 2023 we have seen Greek investments in Bulgaria increase significantly to over 300 million euros, but we also see many Bulgarian entrepreneurs interested in investing in Greece. So, in the near future we see that the importance of our relations will be further strengthened and this will be important not only for our two countries but also for the stability of Southeast Europe as a whole,” the Minister of Economy and Industry said.
The Minister commented on the Bulgarian-Greek relations from Thessaloniki, where the 87th Thessaloniki International Fair is being held, with our country as an honorary guest.
“It is a real honour for us to be the honorary guest country at the Fair, not only because Greece is one of our main trading partners, but also because we have reached an important stage of political and economic development and our two countries have a very fruitful cooperation in various fields,” the Minister said. He added that he expects strategic areas of cooperation to be discussed during the Thessaloniki International Fair from 9 to 17 September, such as
infrastructure, energy and trade
According to Bogdanov, the main priority of the Bulgarian participation is to present at the International Fair a new face of Bulgaria, a new vision that includes the fields of high technology, innovation and education. This is the basis of our national pavilion, he points out, adding that important companies from sectors such as construction, energy, renewable energy sources (RES) and electric mobility are also participating in the Fair.
Before the Greek media Bogdanov presented the two important strategic projects of Bulgaria, which show the new technological face of our country. It is a programme to launch nanosatellites into space, which will provide a platform for the development of future innovations aimed at monitoring and preventing disasters and accidents.
The other is the first Bulgarian company in Europe to receive official approval for
autonomous cargo drone flights
which will start this year, precisely on the territory of Greece.
Both projects were presented at the Bulgarian stand in Thessaloniki.
The Minister of Economy and Industry said that the nanosatellite programme is planned to start in 2025 and can be used for natural disaster management and for early warning and prevention of the effects of climatic events, such as last week’s devastating floods in Greece and Bulgaria.
The company for autonomous flights with cargo drones will start its revolutionary cargo flights from Greece, it became clear from the words of Bogdan Bogdanov.