January 16 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's government is withdrawing its application for EU funding for the construction of a section of Struma motorway in the Kresna Gorge in order to meet environmental recommendations of the European Commission but is not abandoning the project, the government's Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) said.
Despite the withdrawal of the application for financing from the EU's Cohesion Fund submitted to the European Commission on August 9, the project remains a priority to the government and the government's decision would rather speed up the work of all respective institutions involved in its implementation, RIA said in a statement on Wednesday.
"We are not giving up European funding for the Struma motorway section passing through the Kresna Gorge, we are implementing the recommendations of the European Commission for limiting the impact of increasing traffic on the environment," the head of RIA, Georgi Terziyski, said in a press release on Thursday.
He also said that by withdrawing its application for EU funding for the construction of Struma motorway in the Kresna Gorge - the only bottleneck on the road connecting Sofia to Kulata crossing on the border with Greece, Bulgaria is taking into account the new priorities of the new European Commission and its recently presented European Green Deal.
The European Green Deal is a package of measures that should enable European citizens and businesses to benefit from sustainable green transition. It includes measures accompanied with an initial roadmap of key policies.
Terziyski noted that Bulgaria would not add new documents to its application form but would rather take measures already planned in the environmental impact assessment study for the project for rehabilitation of the section of the existing E-79 road crossing the ecologically sensitive area that will form part of the motorway in direction to Greece. In the opposite direction, to Sofia, Struma motorway is planned to follow a new route east of Kresna Gorge.
The measures will be implemented by the end of 2020, rather than after the construction of the motorway section in direction to Sofia is completed, Terziyski said, adding that government institutions will take the necessary actions in order to file a new application form which will ensure EU financing.
"We continue with the necessary procedures for the selection of contractors so that, when we receive the financing, we will be ready to build," Terziyski added.
In the meantime, RIA and Bulgaria's transport ministry can apply for EU financing under operational programme Transport and Transport Infrastructure 2014-2020 of projects which are likely to be completed by the end of 2020. One of the options is the project for construction of Europe motorway that would connect Sofia to Kalotina crossing at the border with Serbia, the head of RIA said.
In November 2019, RIA picked the 600 million levs ($342 million/307 million euro) offer of a consortium comprising four local companies and Slovakia's Vahostav-SK in a tender for building a 13.2-kilometre section of Struma motorway, part of the larger 24-km Kresna-Krupnik section. The Bulgarian members of the consortium are Groma Hold, Evropeiski Patishta, Vodno Stroitelstvo-Blagoevgrad and Patproekt.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)