Challenge

The EU imposed onerous penalties on our client, the Republic of Bulgaria. €825 million of pre-accession funds were frozen. It was a response to its alleged failure to combat corruption, organized crime and misuse of EU funds. Funds worth up to €7 billion over the next six years were also at risk. The Bulgarian government turned to Alber & Geiger for help.

Strategy

Alber & Geiger’s multi-faceted approach involved sophisticated legal analysis calibrated through a dynamic, institution sensitive communications strategy. It incorporated practical considerations like staff changes in the Bulgarian government as well as larger semantic and structural reasons for misunderstandings.

Results

Alber & Geiger was able to restore trust and confidence between the European Commission and the Bulgarian government. The result was the unfreezing of the €500 million in EU funds and the de-jeopardizing of the rest of the €7 billion.

Challenge

Ingevity, a leading specialty chemicals company, provides technologies used by the asphalt industry to make road construction more sustainable, cost-efficient and durable. As the European Union increasingly linked public procurement to sustainability, resilience and European industrial policy, the company faced the risk that new procurement rules could favour the geographic origin of products rather than their actual environmental and technical performance.
Such an approach could disadvantage innovative technologies that help reduce paving temperatures and energy consumption, facilitate the reuse of existing asphalt and extend the service life of roads.

Strategy

Alber & Geiger developed an EU government relations strategy that positioned Ingevity’s asphalt expertise within Europe’s own policy objectives rather than as a question of protecting an individual supplier.
We engaged relevant European Commission officials, Members of the European Parliament and key Member States around the development of European public procurement policy. Our message emphasised that sustainable road procurement should be based on measurable performance, lifecycle costs, durability, emissions reductions and the efficient use of resources.
At the same time, Alber & Geiger positioned Ingevity as a source of technical expertise for policymakers considering how sustainability and resilience requirements should be incorporated into future road procurement rules.

Results

Alber & Geiger brought Ingevity directly into the European policy discussion surrounding sustainable infrastructure and public procurement. We ensured that the advantages of performance-based road procurement — including sustainability, longer road life and lower overall costs — were understood by relevant European decision-makers.
The engagement strengthened Ingevity’s position in Europe and helped establish the company as a technical partner in the EU debate on how Europe should build more sustainable and durable roads.

Challenge

Bulgarian MET Real Estate sought our help vis-à-vis EU state aid and environmental politics. MET planned a development located in an area protected by the EU Nature Directives, having obtained the construction permits through the land swapping laws, common in Bulgaria as in other former Communist countries. Alber & Geiger had to convince the European Commission that there was no illegal state aid in the aftermath of Bulgaria’s EU accession.

Strategy

Our methodology assimilated policy and law into a subtle and meticulously engineered lobbying strategy. It practically depictured to Commission’s experts that a resolution could be found which did not violate state aid law or inhibit Bulgaria’s legitimate development goals.

It used the length and breadth of EU policy fields to put the situation on a macro-European policy context. It relied on the socio-economic dynamics of transition in the Bulgarian property market, and subsumed this framework into consciousness of the European Commission’s policy.

Results

Ultimately we were able to get the Commission, the Bulgarian Government and MET Real Estate, to agree on a settlement that would benefit the internal market and the development needs of the Bulgarian tourism industry. We protected our client from a potentially non-empathetic knee-jerk reaction by the European Commission, which would have had wider implications on the economic health of the region.