Bulgaria welcomes a significant number of people fleeing the war in Ukraine and supports them with food, accommodation and basic material assistance, such as clothes or hygiene products. To fund these exceptional expenses, Bulgaria is using the new flexible rules for reallocating EU Cohesion funds. The European Union introduced this opportunity through the Cohesion’s Action for Refugees in Europe (CARE) initiative to assist the Member States with reprogramming and releasing financial resources from the 2014-2020 funding period swiftly.

The European Commission has now approved the allocation of a total of €37.4 million towards CARE measures. More than half of this amount - €18.5 million - comes from the European Social Fund, with additional contributions of €13.3 million from the European Regional Development Fund and €5.6 million from Bulgaria. These funds are being made available by operational programmes ‘Environment’ and ‘Good Governance’.  In the next weeks, a further €37 million is expected to be approved through the operational programme ‘Innovation and Competitiveness’.  

This comes on top of the support already approved in the summer of 2022 under REACT EU towards labour market integration and food and non-food basic material assistance (€26 million). The use of this funding has already made a difference for many displaced people from Ukraine, who found work in Bulgaria thanks to the ESF CARE ‘Solidarity’ project aiming to support 9 000 war refugees to rebuild their life in the country.