Drivers will soon be able to drive from the port of Igoumenitsa, in northwestern Greece, to the country’s border with Turkey in just six hours, it has been announced.

Work on the Egnatia Highway, which spans northern Greece, is due to be completed by the end of the year, Public Works and Environment Minister Giorgos Souflias said while inspecting the progress of works yesterday.

Once construction is complete on the final section of the highway, a stretch of 117 kilometers, all 647 kilometers of highway will be open and available to drivers.

Souflias said the completion of the project, which began in the 1990s, would be a major success for the ruling conservatives but he also had some faint praise for previous PASOK governments.

“During our time in power, 54 percent of the project was constructed, while the remaining 46 percent was completed chiefly under PASOK governments. We should give plaudits to everyone involved,” he said. “But,” he added, “we should not forget that it took ten years for this 46 percent to be completed, whereas our 54 percent took only five years.”

Three arterial roads, which will link up with the Egnatia Highway, are also being built and will be ready at various stages next year.

The entire project will cost 6.8 billion euros, 2.5 billion of which is being provided by the European Union.

Tolls will be placed along the new highway but Souflias said that no decision had yet been made about how much drivers will have to pay to use the road.

Once the Egnatia Highway is open, it will take roughly six hours to drive from the northwest to the northeast of the country. The journey currently takes about 13 hours.

Souflias also visited another major road-building project in central Greece, pressing the button to trigger the first explosion in the construction of a 6.1-kilometer tunnel in the Vale of Tempe, which has one of the most notorious stretches of the Athens-Thessaloniki national highway.

The construction of the tunnel is part of a wider project to improve that section of the highway, which Souflias dedicated to the 21 schoolchildren who were killed in a coach crash in Tempe five years ago.