Ekaterina Zaharieva presented herself quite worthy of his hearing as a European Commissioner, MEP Radan Kanev (DSB party, which is from the political family of the European People's Party in the European Parliament) told BTA.
"I would say that Ekaterina Zaharieva performed quite decently. It's the beginning of the hearings, we haven't seen much of the other candidates, but she was confident, she knew the stuff of the portfolio she was proposed for. Accordingly, there was no sharp opposition", Kanev said after yesterday's hearing of the Bulgarian candidate for European Commissioner with the portfolio "Start-up enterprises, scientific research and innovation". in Hall 4 Q 2 of the "Jozef Antal" building in the complex of the European Parliament in the Belgian capital Brussels.
Zaharieva was approved as a member of Ursula von der Leyen's new European Commission both by the main examining committee - on industry, scientific research and energy, and by the committee on culture and education, which had the status of "invited" at the hearing.
Kanev also commented on the intention of the Bulgarian candidate for European Commissioner, stated during the hearing, to work to increase investments in innovation and scientific research to 3 percent of the gross domestic product of the EU member states.
"It is about what will be the budget of the program "Horizon", which is the main program in Mrs. Zaharieva's department. This is the program that supports the European innovation policy. In the previous budget, the "Horizon" program was damaged, so now the fight - not only for Mrs Zaharieva, but, I believe, for the entire European Commission - is to increase the budget for this programme. This was Mario Draghi's explicit recommendation in his report," added the Bulgarian MEP.
"An important moment will be that part of the budget that is directly or indirectly related to innovations in the defense sphere, which could be the occasion for the budget to be significantly increased, as I hope,", he also said.