Conceptual Framework for Assessing the Impact of Implementing an Integrated Territorial Approach for Regional Development

The Cohesion policy of the European Union is the basis of the principle concept of functioning in the Community. In this regard, achieving its main goals is of particular importance. In the context of overcoming the main weaknesses before achieving cohesion goals in the Community, the new paradigm of regional development based on integrated and strategic development initiatives and clearly defined competitiveness factors is becoming increasingly popular. The new approach is oriented towards compensatory actions in narrowly defined and nationally significant areas to discover and use the potential of the regions to achieve the “critical mass” necessary for further development. It is for this reason that the new approach for integrated regional development was already adopted in the previous planning period 2014-2020 in the majority of member states.

This article aims to define the conceptual framework for assessing the impact of integrated territorial investments. The methods used are content analysis of documents and GAP analysis, following standard inductive and deductive logical connections. As a result, some key challenges to implementing the integrated territorial approach in Bulgaria have been outlined. The structure of the publication contains a literature review on the topic, a methodological justification of the tools used, and a presentation of the main results and discussion questions.