What Bulgaria Can Expect from the Next EU Budget Period

The European Union's next long-term budget will decide how much money Bulgaria receives and which programmes continue after 2027. Negotiations are still under way, but early proposals point to both opportunities and challenges for Bulgarian citizens.

In July 2025, the European Commission proposed a budget of close to €2 trillion at current prices, with more funding for competitiveness, innovation, defence and security. The European Parliament pushed for a more ambitious figure, but the Irish presidency later suggested cutting the proposal to around €1.62 trillion, according to Mediapool.

For Bulgaria, the initial Commission proposal allocated around €22.3 billion under the overall national package. That sum is not final and covers more than just cohesion funding. How Bulgaria decides to divide the money between education, employment, social inclusion, infrastructure, agriculture and other priorities will be crucial.

One significant change is the creation of AgoraEU, which will merge two existing programmes: CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values) and Creative Europe. Mediapool reports that the proposed budget for AgoraEU has been cut by about 30% compared with the Commission's original suggestion, from €7.61 billion to €5.3 billion at constant 2025 prices. Even so, that would still be roughly 22% more in real terms than the €4.35 billion available in the 2021–2027 period.

The biggest structural shift is the plan to replace multiple EU programmes with a single national plan for each country. Bulgaria would gain more freedom to set its own measures and indicators, but there is a risk that social objectives could slip down the agenda. The government has already started preparing: on 26 October 2026, a draft decree on coordinating the national plan was published, including a role for four groups of civil society organisations.

Roma integration remains a topic of debate. The draft regulation for the European Social Fund still mentions Roma explicitly, but it no longer includes a separate specific objective for the socio-economic integration of marginalised communities. That means funding for desegregation, educational mediators and social inclusion will depend even more on decisions made during national programming.

With final adoption expected in 2027, schools, municipalities, social partners and NGOs have a window to push for concrete measures rather than general declarations. The choices made now will determine whether EU money reaches the people and communities that need it most.