Construction works begin: Soon, we'll get faster to the favorite destination of Serbs

Construction of the highway from Timişoara to Belgrade is underway.

Construction works begin: Soon, we'll get faster to the favorite destination of Serbs

Construction of the highway from Timişoara to Belgrade is underway.

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Ilustracija: Shutterstock/Andrewshots

The Romanian Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Sorin Grindeanu, announced that the Feasibility Study for the highway from Timisoara to the border with Serbia will be completed this spring, as well as that a tender will be announced. Grindeanu pointed out that the construction of a joint border crossing has been agreed, which will be located about 1.55 km from the existing Moravica border crossing, and whose construction will be financed by Romania.

"The environmental permit and the steps for it are almost completed, the geo-studies are 99% completed, the laboratory results are awaited. I say that this spring the feasibility study will be completed and the tender will be announced. That is another point that I care about," Sorin Grindeanu said according to Opinia Timisoarei web portal.

The agreement on the construction of the Belgrade-Timisoara highway was signed in mid-2022 by the then Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure of Serbia, Tomislav Momirović, and the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure of Romania, Sorin Mihail Grindeanu.

The contracting parties then undertook to establish a connection between the two countries by directly connecting the Belgrade-Vatin highway (state border), which will be 65 kilometers long on the Serbian side, and the Timisoara-Moravica highway (state border), approximately 78 kilometers long, on the Romanian side.

The deadline for the completion of the Feasibility Study, which was originally set for May 4, 2022, has been extended several times, most recently to the fall of 2024. Sorin Grindeanu specified that the highway Timisoara-Moravica could be built with European funds, since it is part of the shortest route of the pan-European corridor Gdansk-Thessalonica.

"Timisoara-Moravica is a project that is acceptable from the point of view of the criteria of the European Union," said the Romanian Minister of Transport. Romania, as stated, submitted an application for financing the project through the CEF Military Mobility Program, a program through which the European Commission finances internal projects such as the rehabilitation of some bridges on national roads that pass by military bases, as well as cross-border projects. It is a project worth over 260 million euros, of which 133 million are European funds.

"Next week, a tender will be announced for the Arad-Oradea section. The north-south connection from Gdańsk to Thessaloniki includes - Warsaw, Kraków, Košice (Slovakia), Debrecen (Hungary), Oradea, Arad, Timisoara, Moravica, Belgrade and Thessaloniki. This is the shortest route. Next week, I repeat, a tender will be announced for the Arad-Oradea highway, which must be continued southward, i.e. from Timisoara to Moravica," said the Romanian Minister of Transport, as quoted by the Timisoara portal.

According to the documentation for the future highway that will connect Timişoara to Belgrade, prepared for the Romanian side by the Egis company, the route will have several road junctions, which will provide entrances and exits from the highway to regional roads in Romania. Grindeanu also announced a possible visit to Belgrade.

"I had a dialogue with Aleksandar Vučić, as well as with other representatives of Serbia. In the meantime, I received a letter from my Serbian colleague to visit Belgrade and I will do that, but we continue the project from our side. There is no dilemma, we are going to Moravica. We are going the way we announced, without any problems. We agreed to build a joint border crossing, at the expense of Romania, and we were maximally constructive in all those approaches. This is for us, but not only for us, an important project to connect the north of Europe with the south of Europe," said the Minister of Transport of Romania.

Entry into Serbia will be through the new border crossing, which will be located approximately 1.55 kilometers from the existing Moravica border crossing. As eKapija reminds, in April of last year the Assembly of AP Vojvodina adopted the Decision on the creation of a spatial plan for the special purpose area of the E-70 highway infrastructure corridor, section Pančevo-Vršac-border crossing with Romania (Vatin).

When, in September 2021, the Public Enterprise Roads of Serbia announced, a tender for the preparation of a preliminary feasibility study for the General Project of the E70 Pančevo-Vršac-border with Romania highway, it was stated that the future route of the road represents the continuation of the future bypass around Belgrade (Dobanovci - Ostružnica - Bubanj Potok - Vinča - Pančevo) and will represent the shortest road connection of Romania, via Serbia and Montenegro with Corridor X and with southern Italy and Albania, i.e. with the Mediterranean Basin.