Europe > Southern Europe > Bosnia and Herzegovina > Croatia, Bosnia to Discuss Key Bridge Project

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Croatia, Bosnia to Discuss Key Bridge Project

2016/09/24

The long-delayed construction of the new bridge which will connect the city of Gradiska in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska entity to the Croatian municipality of Stara Gradiska across the River Sava will be discussed by the Bosnian and Croatian authorities at a conference organised by the European Investment Bank in Zagreb next week.

"The conference will be organised on September 22 in Zagreb," Fadil Mandal, a spokesperson for the Bosnian Ministry of Transport and Communications, told BIRN in a written statement.

The construction of the bridge is of primary importance for the infrastructure of Republika Srpska, particularly in the light of the recent inauguration of a highway connecting two of the major cities in the entity, Banja Luka and Doboj, the Bosnian Serb Ministry of Transport and Communications told newspaper Nezavisne Novine.

"The highway from Gradiska to Banja Luka and from Banja Luka to Doboj will only have its full meaning next the building of this bridge," the ministry said.

It added that "the money for the construction of that bridge has by presently been assured and this project tops the inventory of priority infrastructural projects".

Talks about the construction of this bridge, which should cost around 32 million euros, initial started 12 years ago, Bosnian media reported.

But the beginning of construction work was delayed, half because several documents which are needed before officially opening the tender for the work on the bridge have not been drawn up from presently on, inclunding environmental permission from Republika Srpska’s Ministry for Spatial Planning, Civil Engineering and Ecology and construction permission from the Croatian authorities, according to Nezavisne Novine.

An extra reason for the delay that in recent years the Croatian authorities have used the issue of the construction of two bridges on the River Sava, inclunding the one in Gradiska, as a way to pressure the Bosnian authorities to accept the idea of constructing a bridge connecting the Peljesac peninsula to northern Croatian territory, a project that in the completed has been opposed by officials in Sarajevo.

Next week’s conference, which will be attended by representatives of the Croatian Ministry of Maritime Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure, the Bosnian Ministry of Transport and Communications, the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Republika Srpska and representatives of the EU, will as well focus on a highway link from Republika Srpska to the Zagreb-Belgrade road, Mandal said.
- See additional at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/croatia-bosnia-to-discuss-key-br...

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