Bulgaria's government has hired the Brussels law firm Alber & Geiger as consultants as it lobbies the European Commission over its decision to freeze significant amounts of its EU funding, the UK publication Legal Week reported Thursday.
The firm's EU law partner Rolf Waegenbaur is a former director of the EC legal service.
"We are assisting Bulgaria in its efforts with the European Commission to solve its post-accession problems as soon as possible", the managing partner of the Belgian law firm Andreas Geiger is quoted as saying.
After a negative monitoring Commission report in July, which criticized Bulgaria for its failure to tackle corruption and to boost its administrative capacity, the EU froze EUR 825 M of Bulgaria's pre-accession funds.