Brussels would look into accusations for illegal state aid in the concession contract for the Trakiya highway, president of the European Commission (EC) José Manuel Barroso said in reply to written questions from GERB Member of the European Parliament Nikolai Mladenov.

With his written questions, Mladenov tried to get an answer as to whether the EC had been notified of the inclusion of state aid in the concession contract, the MEP said in a media statement.

"Despite the fact that the concession contract for the Trakiya highway has been signed in 2005 before the accession to the EU of Bulgaria and Romania, the contract does not meet the requirements of chapter 2 Politics of Competition in addendum V of the Contract for Accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the EU. Possible elements of state aid included in the contract, could be defined as new aid. This would mean that the entire concession contract, including changes made in 2007, would be re-examined by the EC. The EC has been informed of the contract for the Trakiya highway from 2005 and the latest changes through a complaint from the association Transparency without Borders and Boiko Borissov. As a result, the contract has been registered as state aid, for which no notice was sent to the EC and at the moment preliminaryenquiry into the concession contract is under way," mediapool.bg quoted the letter from Barosso as saying.

In  2007, two annexes to the concession contract had been agreed upon between the Bulgarian Government and the Bulgarian-Portuguese consortium Trakiya Highway. I

n the first annex, the consortium accepted all risks for the construction and repair of the highway, for the organisation and timeliness of the work, and for maintenance services. With the second annex, the state guarantee was cancelled and the deadline by which the consortium would have to find additional funding was prolonged.

While the first annex had been signed, the second wasn't yet. According to mediapool, with these annexes, the state tried to refute the accusation that the contract included illegal state aid.