Bulgarian PR expert Maxim Behar is sitting Monday on the jury of the prestigious European Business Awards (EBA).

The EBA is the most prominent competition promoting entrepreneurship in Europe and this will be the first time for a Bulgarian to have a decisive vote at the contest.

Maxim Behar is owner and CEO of one of Bulgaria's leading PR agencies, M3 Communications Group, Inc., and has been in charge of the Prague Office of global communications corporation Hill+Knowlton Strategies since the beginning of 2012.

He was voted Bulgaria's "Manager of the Year" for 2012 in the online vote of the largest Bulgarian private TV channel bTV as part of the annual top managers' contest of the renowned magazine "Manager".

"This is a big honor for Bulgaria, and I hope that there will be a Bulgarian company among the top ten in the years to come, not only a Bulgarian member of the jury. You have to start somewhere, after all," Behar commented at the EBA jury sitting in Dusseldorf.

Other members of the EBA jury include former Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Grzegorz Kolodko, former Spanish Minister of Industry Joan Majo, Prof. Dr. Christoph Boerner, Chair for Business Administration & Financial Services at the Heinrich-Heine-University in D?sseldorf, and Olivier Garrigue, Founder and Managing Director of Mapesbury Capital Partners.

The jury this year is chaired by Philip Forrest, a leading marketing expert, Chairman of The Osprey Partnershipm and author of "Sold On Service", the first European publication on service quality.

The jury will select Monday the ten most successful companies in Europe, and the results will be officially declared on June 6, at the Conrad Hillton hotel in Istanbul at an official gala dinner and Awards ceremony.