Danube bridge scheduled to be completed by the end of 2006
SOFIA – After years of disputes, a new bridge over the Danube to link Bulgaria and Romania is due for completion by end-2006, but only if EU bureaucracy does not cause further delays, the project manager said yesterday. «The schedule is achievable and realistic, provided there is no delay in the endorsement of relevant documentation by the European Commission, Romania and international financial institutions,» Simeon Evtimov told Reuters in an interview. «If there is a delay, it will be caused by bureaucratic reasons or slow endorsement of documentation.» These have been recurring problems in getting Balkan rebuilding plans off the drawing board. Work on the bridge, joining the Romanian port of Calafat with the Bulgarian town of Vidin near the Yugoslav border, was put off for eight years while the two Balkan neighbors argued about its location, and has since been slowed by red tape. Bulgaria wants the crossing, part of a wider scheme to link the Balkans with the markets of Western Europe, to make it easier to export to the EU, while Romania had lobbied for it to be built further east to cut the cost of upgrading roads. Even after the two EU aspirants patched up the row with help from Brussels in 2000, once Sofia agreed to foot the 190-million-euro ($171-million) bill, the project failed to live up to its «quick-start» status under EU-backed reconstruction plans. Evtimov said a preliminary design for the bridge is now scheduled to be ready in May 2003 before international firms are invited to bid for the construction work, which is due to be completed at end-2006. Evtimov said the new schedule for the bridge, determined after a feasibility study was completed, could be met. «Statements by politicians about shorter terms express their wishes and commitment to the quick completion of the project, but these are not realistic terms,» he said. A foreign engineering and management consultant is due to be appointed in September from a shortlist of some of the 18 firms from EU member and candidate states who have expressed interest. Bulgaria has, so far, secured 5 million euros under the EU’s ISPA preaccession program and 50 million euros as a loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB). Another five had been received as a grant from the government of France, Evtimov said. Sofia is now in talks with Germany for a funding package of some 20 million euros and hopes to secure 70 to 75 million euros as a grant under the ISPA program once the design is approved. It will seek another 20 million euros from the EIB when the projects get to the construction stage and the remaining funding will be secured by the Bulgarian state budget, Evtimov said. Bulgaria and Romania, for whom the Danube forms a natural border, are currently linked by just one heavily congested two-lane rail and road bridge, linking the ports of Rousse and Giurgiu, which is regarded as inadequate for increased traffic. The new bridge will have two motor lanes and one rail track in each direction. It will be part of a transport corridor stretching from Dresden in Germany and forking into two before ending in Thessaloniki, Greece and Istanbul, Turkey. Greece, Bulgaria’s southern neighbor, has pushed Sofia and Bucharest to end their row, as it is also eager to see the project advance – both in order to link up with Western Europe and to provide work for its construction companies.
