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A ceremony has taken place with the signing of a document that paves the way for Bulgaria to work more closely with the European Space Agency (ESA).

An ‘Agreement on European Cooperating State’ was signed between the Bulgarian Government and ESA and sees the Eastern European country join the space organisation. The agreement allows the country’s businesses, including SMEs, to participate in ESA’s development projects and encourage the creation of new high-tech jobs.

The deal was signed between the Bulgarian Minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism, Bozhidar Lukarski, and ESA’s director of industry, procurement and legal services Eric Morel de Westgaver. In comments carried by Bulgaria’s FOCUS Information Agency, Lukarski drew attention to the important role of ESA in European space research, describing it as one of Europe’s “strong assets”. Speaking about the agency, the minister commented: “It stimulates access to space, expanding borders of scientific knowledge and research in the sphere of innovations.

“The ESA opens before EU member states possibilities for the use of its expertise experience capacity in the maximum degree. The EU allocates nearly €12bn for large scale space programmes, such as the Galileo and Copernicus programmes and scientific-applied projects under the Horizon 2020 programme in the 2014-2020 financial framework. They are connected with the use of space and a big part of this budget, 75%, is provided by the EU to the agency; thus the EU is a main source of financing of Europe’s space activities.”

He added that the ESA deal will provide significant new potential to Bulgaria, particularly in the economy, industry and science, as well as to realise investment opportunities.

“Bulgaria has so far been one of the small number of EU countries which did not have the opportunity to join this free market of scientific technological products and services. The signing of this agreement opens new opportunities before the country for activating the scientific and industrial potential. The signing of an agreement with the ESA opens broad opportunities before our country in terms of ensuring access to high-tech technologies and business development in the space sector.”

The signing of the deal took place on Wednesday. ESA has a planned budget of over €4bn during 2015 with funding directed towards developing robots, satellite navigation, increasing energy efficiency and developing new energy sources.