The Transfer of EU Policies in Bulgaria as a Factor for the Union of Bulgarian Municipalities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58894/EJPP.2018.1.253Abstract
Local self-government in Bulgaria, as well as in Europe, faces the need to look for new options to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of governance and public services. This is a result of the constant concentration of the population in large urban centres, of changes in the scope of economic and/or political activities that expand and/or shifted compared to the traditional range of government institutions at all government levels. These processes give the municipalities a number of challenges, including the need to manage public spheres range essentially beyond local issues and the need to provide effective and efficient public services in these areas. Option for overcoming such problems is the greater horizontal integration of governance at local level. Horizontal integration of governance is a form of rationalization of public governance. It requires a system of coordination and cooperation between different actors in the governance process at the appropriate level of governance. For local government this means there are systems for coordination of activities between municipalities and/or system of cooperation and/or association of local authorities as well as with other participants in the processes of elaboration and implementation of public policies on local level, including representatives of the central government. Despite the obvious advantages inter-municipality cooperation lays some risks, the main of which is the creation and/or increases the democratic deficit in governance. In the Bulgarian administrative and governmental tradition, the specific form of inter-municipal cooperation for the provision of public services is unknown to 2010 practice. The objective of this analysis was to evaluate the transfer of EU policies in Bulgaria as a factor for the inter-municipality cooperation in Bulgaria and to what extent this is a factor for restrict of local self-government.