Apply AI
Apply AI in Bulgaria
Europe has committed to getting AI into everyday industrial use. Here is what that means for a company in Bulgaria, and how to make use of it.
What the strategy is
In October 2025 the European Commission published the Apply AI Strategy. It is the EU’s overarching sectoral AI strategy, aimed at making European industry more competitive and strengthening the EU’s technological sovereignty, with SMEs named as a specific focus.
The strategy is deliberately about deployment rather than regulation. Where the AI Act sets the rules, Apply AI is about getting the technology into use – in manufacturing, mobility, agri-food, energy, healthcare, construction, and the public sector.
It rests on three parts: sectoral flagship initiatives in key industries, cross-cutting measures to support SMEs and build an AI-ready workforce, and a governance mechanism through the Apply AI Alliance and the AI Observatory.
What it means for your company
Strategy documents rarely change anything on a factory floor. This one comes with instruments attached, and four of them are directly usable by a Bulgarian SME.
Test before you invest
European Digital Innovation Hubs have been refocused as Experience Centres for AI, acting as single entry points into the EU’s AI ecosystem. Their core services include technical expertise and experimentation facilities, training, help accessing finance, and ecosystem building – so you can trial an approach before committing capital to it.
Facilities you could never build yourself
Testing and Experimentation Facilities, AI Factories, and regulatory sandboxes are open to companies that need serious compute or a controlled environment to validate a system.
Skills support
The strategy includes measures for an AI-ready workforce, including the AI Skills Academy and sector-specific upskilling.
Funding
The Commission points to Horizon Europe and the Digital Europe Programme, alongside InvestAI and the Recovery and Resilience Facility, as the funding behind this agenda. Which of these a given company can realistically reach varies, and that is a question worth asking before you spend time on an application.
The sectors in focus
The strategy names strategic sectors for its flagship initiatives. Several map directly onto where Bulgarian SMEs already compete.
Manufacturing and engineering
Quality inspection, predictive maintenance, production planning
Agri-food
Yield forecasting, resource use, supply chain traceability
Mobility and transport
Route and fleet optimisation, warehouse automation
Energy
Demand forecasting, grid and consumption efficiency
Construction
Planning, scheduling, materials and safety monitoring
Healthcare and pharmaceuticals
Diagnostics support, administrative workload
If your company works in one of these, the case for acting sooner rather than later is stronger – funding and attention will follow the flagships.
A note on the rules
Companies often ask whether the AI Act makes adoption risky. For most SME use cases it does not. The obligations scale with risk, and typical business applications – forecasting, scheduling, quality inspection, document processing – sit well below the high-risk threshold. The Commission has also set up an AI Act Service Desk and regulatory sandboxes precisely so that smaller companies can get answers without hiring a law firm.
We will tell you plainly where your intended use sits, and when it genuinely warrants legal advice.
What CLAIRICE does about it
We track it so you don’t have to
Calls open and close, programmes change shape, and the practical detail is spread across a dozen Commission pages. We follow it and publish what matters for Bulgarian SMEs.
We translate it into your terms
A flagship initiative in manufacturing means very little until someone tells you which of your processes it applies to. That is the conversation we have.
We help you reach the instruments
Assessment, funding application, partner introductions – the practical work of turning an opportunity into a project.
We carry your perspective upward
The Apply AI Alliance is a coordination forum bringing together AI providers, industry, academia, and the public sector, open to organisations interested in European AI policy in strategic sectors. Bulgarian SMEs are under-represented in these discussions. We work to change that.
Find out what applies to you
A short conversation is usually enough to establish which instruments are realistic for your company and which are not worth your time.