Corridor VIII now cleared?
Balkan neighbours come to agreement over Pan-European Transport Corridor VIII. After months of feuding representatives from Bulgaria, North Macedonia and the European financial institutions EIB and EBRD held a meeting on 31 October and agreed on the technical parameters to link the Bulgarian and Macedonian road and rail networks along Pan-European Transport Corridor VIII.
At the meeting in Sofia the neighbouring countries Bulgaria and North Macedonia agreed on a timeframe for the construction work in their border region and on a tender procedure to have the Deve Bair cross-border tunnel system built by a single contractor.
This agreement seems to have settled a months-long bilateral controversy over joint transport infrastructure projects for the Pan-European Transport Corridor VIII – at least for the time being.
The corridor has been designed to connect the two Balkan countries and create a railway line linking their capitals Sofia and Skopje for the first time. Shortly after taking office in summer 2024, however, the Republic of North Macedonia’s nationalist government headed by prime minister Hristijan Mickoski began using the project as a means to exert political pressure on northern neighbour Bulgaria.
The European Union Commission has, at the instigation of Bulgaria, demanded that North Macedonia mention the Bulgarian minority in the Macedonian constitution as a prerequisite for the commencement of EU accession negotiations.
In what has been construed as a retaliatory move prime minister Mickoski announced in July that his cabinet might reallocate funds granted by the EU Commission for transport projects along Corridor VIII in favour of projects along Corridor X, which runs from Salzburg via Belgrade and Skopje to the Aegean port of Thessaloniki.
A short route of great significance
Pan-European Transport Corridor VIII is approximately 1,000 km long and has been designed to connect Albania’s Adriatic port of Durrës with the Bulgarian Black Sea ports of Varna and Burgas, running via Skopje. In a broad sense it thus builds a bridge between Italy and Central Asia.
It isn’t only considered of great importance for commercial cargo transport, but also of military significance, for example for Nato troop and material movements, which might be key in a hypothetical emergency arising from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
When Bulgaria held the EU Council Presidency in 2018, it announced that roads and railways in the Bulgarian-Macedonian border region would be completed by 2025. Now, however, 2030 is considered the earliest possible date. If the government in Skopje had actually implemented its declared intention of reallocating funds, then the realisation of the corridor would have become even more distant.
Although the EU Commission, through its financial institutions, has provided grants and loans to North Macedonia for the construction of the railway line from Kriva Palanka to the Bulgarian border, which will cost approximately EUR 560 million, North Macedonia’s transport minister Alexander Nikoloski specifically questioned its economic viability.
No less than 22 tunnels have to be built for the 24 km route in the mountainous border area, for example, and 20 residential buildings in Kriva Palanka have to be demolished.
In addition, Nikoloski accused Bulgaria of not even starting the technical design planning for its 1,194 m section of the Deve Bair border tunnel. “The problem with the railway line from Kriva Palanka to the Bulgarian border is that it ends in a tunnel to nowhere, because we can only build it on our side,” he explained.
His Bulgarian counterpart Krasimira Stoyanova rejected the accusation of inaction, saying that Bulgaria had already built part of its tunnel in 1948. She assured her counterpart that her government is planning to complete the technical design planning for the Bulgarian section by the end of this year, so that the overall project can be completed by 2030.