site.btaBulgaria, Romania Start Feasibility Studies for Siting New Bridges over Common Danube Sector

Bulgaria and Romania are launching simultaneous feasibility studies of five locations on their respective Danube banks for construction of new bridges, Bulgaria's Transport and Communications Ministry said in a press release on Monday.

Under an intergovernmental Memorandum of Understanding, the two countries will choose sites for new bridges over their common sector of the Danube from five locations: Oryahovo-Bechet, Nikopol-Turnu Magurele, Svishtov-Zimnicea, Rousse-Giurgiu, and Silistra-Calarasi. At present, there are only two bridges between the Bulgarian and the Romanian banks of the river: at Rousse-Giurgiu and at Vidin-Calafat, leading to severe bottlenecks in cross-border traffic.   

Addressing a meeting of the joint Bulgarian-Romanian working group on connectivity in the Romanian capital on Monday, Bulgarian Transport and Communications Minister Nikolay Sabev said that his country will adequately respond to Romania's priority on Danube dredging. On June 20, the Executive Agency for Exploration and Maintenance of the Danube River will start dredging the river on its own resources, and a public procurement procedure for dredging will be initiated within a week, Sabev said, specifying that the documents are ready and have been sent to the Public Procurement Agency. He added that BGN 15 million have been allocated for deepening the river bed over a three-year period.

Sabev and Romanian Deputy Prime Minister and Transport and Infrastructure Minister Sorin Grindeanu agreed that a joint working group will draft a proposal for financing by the European Commission of the planned engineering works under the FAST DANUBE Project. 

The  EUR 5,252,000 FAST DANUBE Project, co-financed by the EU Connecting Europe Facility, is intended to ensure navigation conditions in the Romanian-Bulgarian sector of the Danube and safe transport round the year, as recommended by the Budapest-based Danube Commission.

Sabev informed his Romanian counterpart that Bulgaria is completely ready for the launch of a Rousse-Giurgiu ferry link and suggested that joint border control be carried out in Rousse until the necessary arrangements for this are made in Giurgiu. Grindeanu committed to approach local government for speeding up work in Giurgiu.

Bulgaria is planning to start repairing its part of the Rousse-Giurgiu bridge in July, which Romania fears may pose serious problems to tourst and trade flows, the press release said. Sabev will discuss the issue with Deputy Prime Minister Grozdan Karadjov so that the repair timing would impede to a minimum traffic between the two countries. 

The Bulgarian delegation to the working group meeting was accompanied by the Bulgarian Ambassador in Bucharest Radko Vlaykov.