The Trakia Highway concession had no place in the European Union (EU), Els de Groen, a Dutch member of the European parliament (EP), said on March 8 in an interview with a Bulgarian-language newspaper.

On March 29 2005, the National Movement Simeon II (NMSII) government decided to award a 35-year concession on the Trakia Highway to a Portuguese-Bulgarian consortium, Trakia Highway JSC, comprised of three Portuguese companies (MSF-Moniz da Maia, Serra e Fortunato-Empreiteiros of Lisbon; Lena Engenharia e Construcoes of Fatima; and Somague Concessoes e Servicos of Sintra) and two Bulgarian companies (Avtomagistrali and Technoexportstroy) without competitive bidding. The consortium was contracted to build 188km of the Trakia Highway and to use it for 35 years.

After its signing, many politicians in Bulgaria harshly criticised the contract, as did the European Commission (EC), for lack of transparency.

After it became clear that the consortium did not have the turnover needed to carry out such a project, an investigation of the deal started.

The Supreme Administrative Court is expected to make a decision about the concession within a few weeks and tension is rising.

De Groen, a European Green Party MP in the EP and also a member of the joint Bulgaria-EU parliamentary committee in the EP, said that the court and legal procedures would slow down the whole process enough so that the final decision could be made even after January 1 2007, when Bulgaria is scheduled to join EU. De Groen said that she would lobby the EC against the deal. The Trakia contract had harmed Bulgarian citizens' interests and had nothing to do with European policies, she said.

De Groen said she knew that in the ruling government coalition in Bulgaria, one of the partners did not want to "to harm the other's interests", but, nevertheless, she insisted on taking the matter up with the EC. The ruling coalition in Bulgaria is made up of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), NMSII and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. Before the June 2005 parliamentary elections, the BSP was the main critic of the Trakia concession granted by NMSII, but after the ruling coalition was formed the issue was left behind.

De Groen said that to her it was obvious that the Government - led by BSP leader Sergei Stanishev - did not do anything to stop the concession contract. De Groen wanted the EC to show Bulgaria a red card instead of yellow one, regarding previous statements by Olli Rehn, EU enlargement commissioner, about the Trakia deal.

De Groen said that there were forces in the EU-aspiring countries that opposed their countries' EU membership. This membership was of great importance not only to these countries' economic progress, but also to their political development "as a buffer against political extremism, too". Hence the major importance that the accession process not be delayed.

At the end of her interview, de Groen said that the Bulgarian judiciary had a lot of work to acomplish the necessary reforms.

Bulgaria had its chances but there was "skepticism, too". As an example of the skepticism, de Groen said that the biggest party in the ruling coalition in the Netherlands demonstrated a dubious attitude towards Bulgaria's EU accession on January 1 2007. The greatest concern was the slow pace of the legislation reforms, as well as "the deeply rooted corruption and the strengthening of the Ataka nationalist party". De Groen said that the decision on the date of Bulgaria's EU accession would be made at the end of the year instead of in June, as was originally scheduled. This would enable the EU to exert some additional pressure, de Groen said.

In June 2005, De Groen expressed suspicions that Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission and former prime minister of Portugal, was involved with the deal. Bulgarian-language newspapers quoted De Groen as saying that Barosso recommended the investors to Saxe-Coburg.

Rehn denied that any European Commission members had been consulted on issues concerning the Trakia Highway. However, Rehn said that the consequence of not holding a tender for the highway's concession should be that no EU funds would be granted for its construction.

For the period of 2007-2013, Bulgaria expects between 850 million and 900 million euros in EU financing for first-grade roads. A further 900 million euros will be provided over that period for the country's railway infrastructure, and approximately as much for fourth-grade roads.

In October 2005 during his visit to Bulgaria, Wolfgang Roth, vice president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), said that the EIB would await the court's decision before deciding whether to fund the Trakia highway project. Approval from the EIB is one of the conditions for the implementation of the concession contract, since the bank is providing a loan of 100 million euro.

Direct economic benefits for Bulgaria from the Trakia construction were expected to exceed three billion euro in royalties, 700 million euro in taxes and 1000 permanent jobs, according to estimates by Saxe-Coburg's government.