The transport connectivity and interoperability of the Western Balkan systems will be one of the main topics on the European agenda over the next four months. This was stated by the Deputy Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications Velik Zanchev at the annual conference "Strategic Infrastructure and Investments 2018 - Cohesion and Connectivity", organized by the City Media Group. It is extremely important for Bulgaria at the moment to prove to its European partners that the good connectivity of this region will guarantee greater security and economic growth for the whole European Union, he added.
In his words, in the last year in the Western Balkans region there is an intensive process of project consolidation and corridor consideration, and Bulgaria has made a major contribution to this. Deputy Minister Zanchev stressed that as a result of the cohesion policy of the countries in the region, support was received from the European Commission for the construction of the Sofia-Skopje and Sofia-Nish connections as well as the multimodal corridor Rousse-Varna-Burgas-Alexandroupolis-Kavala -Thessaloniki. Within a few months, we signed memoranda of cooperation with Macedonia, Serbia and Greece for the construction of the railway infrastructure along these corridors. They are an expression of the strong political will, in parallel and in coordination, to build the missing links, which will guarantee the completion of the corridors and a higher value of the investments, Velik Zanchev said.
The head of the Operational Program on Transport and Transport Infrastructure (OPTTI) Managing Authority Galina Vassileva presented the current status of the projects with EU funding from the OPTTI 2014-2020 and the Connecting Europe Facility. She pointed out that four of the six major OPTTI projects were approved by the European Commission and two of them were under preparation - Lot 3.2 of Struma Motorway and second phase of the Plovdiv-Burgas railway line. For the next multiannual financial framework of the EU, we will insist that the transport sector retains the grant funding, as these are low returns projects and are not attractive to private investors, Galina Vassileva said.
