After serving as one of Bulgaria’s youngest judges, and then as a senior public servant, Andrey Delchev has for the past decade headed up a large law firm that boasts an arsenal of specialists.

The manager: Andrey Delchev
The job: Managing partner and procurator, Eurolex Bulgaria LTD
In brief: Founded by Delchev in 1997, Eurolex Bulgaria today is among the top Bulgarian legal consultancy firms. Eurolex has received recognition in the form of co-operation with international institutions such as the World Bank, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The Japanese Bank for International Co-operation, The European Investment bank and USAID. The fields in which the company works include commercial law, privatisation, concessions, water law, energy, administrative law, protection of competition, and public companies.

The word consultancy has controversial connotations in Bulgaria.

People often relate the consultancy business with rather shadowy activities conducted behind closed doors.

With frankness, Andrey Delchev, managing partner of the leading Eurolex Bulgaria consulting company, says: “If I say that this is not completely true, I will be accused of not knowing about the case of Sofia’s heating utility Toplofikatsia and the corruption scandals around it”.

He is quick to add that because of such scandals, professional legal consulting companies such as Eurolex have been unfairly added to the targets of public resentment.

“Indeed the word consultant has been given a very wide definition. Sometimes people who are involved in unfair businesses are also called consultants but this is not true of our business.”

Eurolex’s website says that the company provides “highly professional business legal, finance and accounting services to Bulgarian and foreign companies and individuals in their activity in multiple sectors of the dynamically developing Bulgarian economy”.

Delchev says: “We try to ease, help, and in some cases, build the business of our clients, and there is nothing hidden in this. That’s why more and more companies choose us every day. Our business is completely transparent, we are among the largest taxpayers in Bulgaria and there is nothing dubious in our work”.

It is a great challenge to be among the best legal consultancy companies in a very dynamic environment such as that in Bulgaria, Delchev agrees.

“The period between 1991 and 2007 - when Bulgaria joined the European Union - was a time of rapid changes to the legislative framework.”

The first 10 years was a period of transition in Bulgaria from one legal system to another. Almost everything had to be changed, from the constitution all the way down to technical provisions.

“When Bulgaria started its EU accession process we had to change our legislation to be in compliance with that of the EU. This process was more or less completed at the beginning of 2007 when we joined the EU, and I think that the changes that lie ahead will not be so radical but rather a result of natural processes in society.”

Delchev says that working in this fast-changing legislative environment was no easy thing.

“Many people think that it is enough to read the State Gazette every month to know everything about the new laws. It is not that easy. First, because an amendment to some law leads to a change in the entire respective legal system and one cannot monitor everything.

“Second, you can try to be informed about the sphere you work in, but you cannot possibly know what is happening in other legal spheres. This is a great challenge for us as consultants.”

When it comes to legislation, Delchev is probably among the few people in the country who can speak from his own professional experience. His entire career has been characterised by “lucky chances”, as he calls them.

Excelling as a law student at Sofia’s St Kliment Ohridsky University, Delchev graduated in 1985.

Back then, four years before the fall of communism in Bulgaria, Delchev was offered a post as a judge at Sofia Regional Court. He remained there until 1990.

“It was what I wanted, to be a judge, and I had no doubt about accepting the offer”.

In the late 1980s, graduates in law had little interest in being judges, Delchev says.

“Back then, it was difficult to become a lawyer because there were some limitations.”

Reflecting on his time at Sofia Regional Court, Delchev says: “Today things are a bit different. Anyone who wants to become a lawyer can do so. There are no limitations. However, now we have limitations about who can become judges, and interest in such a post has grown stronger.”

Delchev fulfilled one of his ambitions for his professional development when, at the age of 30, he became the youngest chairman of the biggest regional court in Sofia.

“At that time there were 10 regional courts in Sofia and I was the chairman of the biggest.”

In 1989, the transition to democracy began in Bulgaria and change became something usual for the country. Change came for Delchev too. Again he received an attractive offer. His relatively young age and the years spent as a member of the judiciary paid off.

“In 1991 I was invited to join the Cabinet administration as head of the legal department. For me, this was a natural evolution in my professional development, but also a consequence of the times.

“On January 1 1991, I became the head of the legal department of the Cabinet, where I spent seven years. At various times, I occupied the position of chief secretary of the Cabinet as well.”

Delchev has a clear and forthright explanation about why he was invited to occupy this prestigious post.

“For me, the reason why I was invited was because the people in this institution appreciated my will for the system to change. In short, I think my appointment was due to the restructuring that had started in those years. It was just two years after the democratic changes and the times were very dynamic.”

Some might think that such an important job requires a lot of experience and years in the profession.

“My work in the courts gave me the required confidence, because working as a judge is a wonderful profession and it gives you a lot of confidence, sometimes too much confidence,” he smiles.

It was this sense of confidence that led Delchev to take up the post with the Cabinet office with no hesitation.

“I went there and managed to build a young and very united team of specialists, who still work there. Some of the prime ministers that came into power were also still young, so the whole atmosphere was helpful for my professional development.”

It was a time when the old-order communists and new democrats were grappling each other for power. The result was a series of back-and-forth changes of government between left-wing and right-wing forces.

The fact that Delchev managed not only to survive but also to operate effectively makes his reflections on the time interesting.

“Again, I was lucky enough to join the Cabinet administration while I was very young. And by ‘luck’, I mean that I knew that if someone suddenly decided for some reason to replace me, I had my whole professional life ahead of me, and plenty of opportunities to develop. I had no fear about what would happen if I lost my job.”

Delchev’s colleagues who were somewhat more advanced in age were in a different situation.

“These were people who were in their 50s and for them to be dismissed from the Cabinet office was some kind of a personal drama.” They had no certainty of finding another job.

But Delchev had the comfort of working without feeling such pressure.

“I created a team that was able to work under both ‘red’ and ‘blue’ prime ministers,” he says, referring to the colours associated with the left- and right-wing parties, respectively .

With so many ideologically different “bosses”, Delchev has an explanation for how he managed to survive each time a new prime minister came to power. “It is not a matter of conformity. The legal profession is very clear, you cannot have different approach towards every single prime minister. Your job is to say whether the acts adopted by the Cabinet comply with the law or not. My opportunity was that for seven years, working with seven different prime ministers, I managed to prove that I could work with every one of them professionally without mixing politics with the job.”

But seven years in this kind of job is not a short time.

“It is very exhausting. In most cases, the prime ministers who came to power together with their cabinet ministers were not professional politicians, to say nothing of the fact that there were very few lawyers among them. Some of them, at that point, were idealists, some nihilists, from a legal point of view. These were people with whom I had to fight to prove that one must obey the law.

In my sixth year, I started realising that this was not my idea of a professional career and most probably I would not end my professional days there. I realised that this was not my dream.”

Fortunately, before he had to make his final decision on his own, Delchev was in a way “helped” by Ivan Kostov, then the leader of the Union of Democratic Forces, who became prime minister in 1997.

“He simply told me that I was not part of his team, and I simply left, without bad feeling, and entered the private sector. It was not a question of mutual discontent, just a natural process.”

Today Delchev says that he is grateful to Kostov for his decision.

“This was how I started Eurolex, together with a couple of my colleagues who are now partners in the firm. I have never regretted how things happened, because I consider the time that I spent in the state administration as a great time. I learned a great deal, established many contacts and I would not have changed it for anything else.”

It went well for Delchev after that.

“On the second day after I left, I had a signed contract on my desk.”

Naturally, Delchev admits that the private sector is a different universe where you have to market your skills to others, not wait for them to come to you.

“I am still learning how to do this, but I consider it an ongoing process.”

Today, 10 years after the firm was founded, Delchev places Eurolex among the top five legal consultancy companies in Bulgaria.

“In many areas, Eurolex is the leader, with unique experience in infrastructure projects - dam concessions, port concessions, the Sofia subway project, among others.”

The company has worked and currently works with prestigious international institutions such as the World Bank, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The Japanese Bank for International Co-operation, the European Investment Bank, USAID, CIDA and EU programmes like Phare, Ispa and Sapard.

“What our foreign partners want and get from us is a high level of professionalism, the ‘Western business attitude’ which differs in many aspects from the Bulgarian way.

“We are attractive because of our good contacts as well, which in Bulgaria remains a very important advantage.”

Law companies usually work with three or four lawyers while Eurolex has close to 20 lawyers in its ranks.

“We have offices in Sofia and Varna and we try to cover more ground which makes us very attractive to clients. Because of the larger number of employees, we are able to have people who specialise in different fields, which is another big advantage that distinguishes Eurolex from its competitors.”

To stay on the market for 10 years, one must have a clear management strategy in order to survive and be competitive.

“We prefer to employ young people who come straight from university. We like to train them in our way so that they can meet our criteria as professionals in order to count on them in the future.”

Invest in young people and profit from their results, is Delchev’s view.

He says that conflicts in the office are inevitable when people work together.

“In such cases, I try to investigate the problem individually with the parties involved. This is something I learned during my time as a judge. I try to hear the other side and to decide about the conflict.”

Judging from his experience, Delchev says that salary is not the most important thing in a profession.

“We try to maintain a team spirit in the company, and of course we try to offer our staff high salaries so that we can be competitive on the labour market.”

This opens the theme of the standard of higher education in Bulgaria, and the lack of qualified staff in the country after it joined the EU.

“What students learn in university is the theory, and I can honestly say that Bulgarian universities do not give enough practical experience to the students. That is why we train our young staff members in practical skills.” However, he admits that if you do not have good theoretical knowledge you will never become good professional.

“So we use the theory the students have learnt in university and combine it with our practical experience.”

On the occasion of Eurolex’s 10th anniversary, the company has granted a scholarship to one of the law students at Sofia University.
“We decided to grant a scholarship to the best student at the university. After a contest, we selected a young woman who will be granted 200 leva a month for the next tuition year.

“Ognyan Gerdjikov, former speaker of Parliament, was deeply involved in the selection for which we are very grateful.

“We intend to make this scholarship a tradition and from next year we might be able to increase the money.”

In 2001, when the National Movement Simeon II (now known as the National Movement for Stability and Progress, NMSP) won the elections, many lawyers joined the executive branch of government.

Was Delchev tempted to join them and go back to the Cabinet office or to Parliament?

“When this wave of young legal experts entered the state administration I had just left it. And I left it with a clear idea why I was doing so.”

He admits he has had several offers to come back, but “probably I still have some fatigue from those seven years at the Cabinet, and I am still very much interested in what I am doing right now.

“You see there is a group of people who entered the executive seven years ago from the NMSP, who wanted to prove themselves and make money. To me, the idea of working for the state and the idea of becoming rich contradict each other.

“Many made their money illegally and I disagree with that. Relying on your budget salary, even if you are a high profile government official, will not make you rich. You will be able lead a normal not lavish life, and yet we see people leaving the administration richer than they were before.”

At the same time, another group of people left the administration to make money and “I am from these group of people. Today I make money using my experience and contacts I have created during my time in administration”.

Bulgaria lacks a definition of “lobbying”.

“I support the idea of having a law on lobbying, because the practice exists.

Without such a law it is very difficult to make the distinction between corruption and lobbying. Until we adopt such a law, there will always be the doubt about how you convince someone in the executive to take a certain decision.”

Six months after Bulgaria’s EU accession, Delchev is positive about the business environment.

“The business climate has improved substantially, especially when it comes to the trust that foreign companies have in Bulgaria.”
Bulgaria is part of the EU, the country has fulfilled certain criteria and “despite the fact that we are not as rich as other EU members, we follow the same rules as in every other EU country, and this matters to business.”

The downside is that now there is a deficit of qualified people because of the wider EU labour market.

For Delchev, this will be among the serious problems in Bulgaria’s future. “Until recently, Bulgaria was the place where you could find qualified people working for relatively low prices. Things have changed now and finding qualified staff has become very difficult.”
A final question, about his personal ambitions, takes Delchev a little bit by surprise.

“I have never actually have though about it that much.”

After a short pause, he says: “From a personal point of view, I see myself in five years as part of a successful legal firm not only in Bulgaria but in the region, and a happy grandfather”.