Bulgaria Gives Go-Ahead to Danube Bridge II - First Sod of the Project

Novinite.com, 14 may 2007

Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev broke ground for the construction of a second bridge over the Danube River, that will connect Bulgaria and Romania.

The bridge is to link the Bulgarian Danube port of Vidin to the Romanian city of Calafat by road and rail. It is a key element of a European transport corridor from the German city of Dresden to Istanbul in Turkey.

The event is organized by Bulgaria's Transport Ministry and the Spanish FCC Company, which will implement the project for designing and building the bridge.

Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas SA company signed at the end of January a EUR 100 M contract, which covers a period of 50 months plus a grace period of 12 months.

The facility will be 1971 meter-long including a road and a rail bridges with two lanes in each direction as well as one railway track.

The project will cost EUR 236 M to be completed.

Funding came from ISPA programmes of the EU, from the European Investment Bank and other international financial institutions. Some national input is also to be found in the financing of the bridge.

Bulgaria and Romania, which both joined the European Union on January 1, signed an agreement to build the Vidin-Calafat bridge in 2000, but various bureaucratic obstacles delayed the project.

At the moment, the only bridge on the 610km section of the Danube that forms the Bulgarian-Romanian border links Ruse in Bulgaria and Giurgiu in Romania by road and rail.

Read hot news and see full report with pictures from the place of the event. By VisitBulgaria.NET.