Challenge

Alber & Geiger was tasked with supporting entry into the EU for clients whose families suffered intimidation and coercion in their respective home countries. This would require us to obtain student visas for the UK. Their applications to leading UK universities had failed before. In a short space of time we had to support their applications.

We had to deal with the specific entities and their own distinct decision making processes. This had to be done with political sensitivity, and we had to rely on the integrity of the system to ensure that political influences did not have a bearing on their entry into the UK.

Strategy

The strategy required an expedient understanding of the nooks and crannies inside the UK education system. It used careful neutral language to ensure that their applications were not misconstrued. It relied on the basis of our firm’s intrinsic aptitudes.

We worked to break down and analyse the discretionary selection criteria of each university. The documents thoroughly assimilated the ‘criteria language’ of the universities into their narrative. In this case we had to effectively co-ordinate through the network of statutory instruments and satisfy the executive concerns they were designed to address.

Results

The result was the safe arrival of the families into the UK and their admission into top tier universities. The transferable nature of our skills is constantly being tested by the ever changing institutional framework of Europe.

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.

Challenge

Alber & Geiger was able to bring out the extraterritorial reach of EU human rights. This was against the backdrop of its clients having lost all available domestic remedies. The Former Minister of Economic Development of Azerbaijan and his brother were arrested on the eve of the Azerbaijani election. Initially accused of attempting a putsch, they were ultimately found liable for embezzlement. The European Court of Human Rights had held that the several of their rights had been infringed, especially the right to a fair trial. Nevertheless the Aliyevs remained imprisoned under their disproportionate and potentially wrongful sentences.

Strategy

Alber & Geiger’s strategy utilized the EU-Azerbaijan trade talks to leverage the EU institutional playmakers at opportune moments. Our litigious narrative extracted the EU’s human rights obligations underlying the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), and demonstrated the innocence of the Aliyev’s.

Simultaneously we drew on the Aliyev’s pro-western views, showing through adversarial fact finding that this underlay their imprisonment. Substantively, we put forward that it was incumbent on the Azerbaijani authorities under these circumstances to show their commitment to the rule of law. In order to benefit from the ENP they had to play by its rules.

Results

Ultimately we secured a complete pardon for both of the Aliyevs. However, the broader reach of this mandate was the raising of awareness regarding human rights issues in Azerbaijan. This put the EU-Azerbaijani relationship on a trajectory of greater trust. The sensitive political dynamics were tackled head on and resolved with expedience.