Bulgarian authorities had to put on hold the deal for the country’s Trakiya highway because the deal was to be investigated by the European Commission (EC), MEP Nikolai Mladenov said on October 22, as quoted by Bulgarian National Radio (BNR).

Bulgaria’s permanent representation at the European Union (EU) received a letter from EC’s Transport and Energy Directorate-General, which asked the state to provide the whole documentation on the deal, including the final versions of the contract and the annexes to it. The EC was to check whether there was inadmissible state aid, enlisted in the contract, Mladenov said.

The 30-year build-and-operate concession on the key Trakiya highway linking the country’s western border with the port of Bourgas on the Black Sea coast was signed in 2005 with a consortium comprising Portuguese construction companies Lena-Engenharia e Construcoes, Moniz Da Maia Serra & Fortunato-Empreiteiros (MSF) and Somague, and Bulgarian state-owned construction firms Technoexportstroi and Avtomagistrali.

Although the current Government renegotiated the contract in late 2006, claiming it was revised to better suit the Bulgarian interests, the deal was still criticised by the EU, which required the concession costs to be considered expenditure of the concessionaire, not consolidated government budget spending, as the latter would in fact be a state aid.

The EC feared that the Government was planning to pay the concessionaire the difference that would possibly spur in the expected revenue from toll taxes for the highway if the amount was not achieved. This was a typical example of an inadmissible state aid, and was thus violating Bulgarian and EU law.