Bulgaria and 15 EU Countries Will Work in a Project for Supercomputers

16 European Union countries, including Bulgaria, will create a European Supercomputer Enterprise. The ambition is for Europe to return to the world map as one of the leaders in this field. This was announced by EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Mariya Gabriel, in a forum for the digital future of Europe, organised by the Ministry of Education on 19^th of April. According to Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, the key to success is the unification of high-tech European nations.

In 2012, Europe holds 4 of the first 10 supercomputers in the world. Today, however, we are out of this ranking. In order to be a competitive Europe to China, the United States and Japan, the European Commission is committed to investing a billion euros by 2021 and another several billion in the next multiannual financial framework by 2028 for supercomputers.

Today we want to more quickly develop drugs against cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases. We want encrypted communications. This can happen with supercomputers.

The proposal is to establish a network of competence centres to give access of small and medium-sized enterprises, the scientific community and the public sphere at local level to the high technologies. According to Prime Minister Borissov, Bulgaria is well placed to be a regional leader in this area.

Boyko Borissov, Prime Minister of Bulgaria, With the funds allocated to these regional centres, with these powerful processing systems that will be built, with the experience we have, with the leading start of Germany, France as high-tech countries and other European countries, we can unite, invest the necessary money and go back to the 4th place where we were, Bulgaria’s PM Boyko Borissov said.

Today, Europe has a shortage of 350,000 IT specialists, but the figure will reach 500,000 in 2020. According to PM Borissov, economies that have supercomputers in the coming years will sharply outperform the rest.