Adina Valean: Proposals for improving transport infrastructure will bring Romania on a new European corridor

The European Commissioner for Transport, Adina Valean, announced on Wednesday that she has presented at this year's end four proposals that will lead to the modernization of transport, with great emphasis on railway infrastructure and inland waterways, and the novelty for Romania is that it will be part of two European transport corridors: the current Rhine-Danube corridor and a newly created corridor: the Baltic Sea-Black Sea-Aegean Sea, agerpres reports.

The Rhine-Danube corridor will be extended to the main ports on the North Sea and will continue to link Romania (including the port of Constanta and the port of Sulina in the Danube Delta) to the economic heart of the EU in Germany (Frankfurt, Stuttgart). The corridor also crosses Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Austria and the Czech Republic.

The new corridor of the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea will run along the eastern flank of the EU, connecting all member states along this border. This will create a new connection between Poland (Gdynia / Gdansk), Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece.

"One of our goals is to better connect the eastern part of the EU with the European high-speed rail network. For Romania, this means a high-speed line linking Constanta, Bucharest, Brasov, Sibiu, Cluj-Napoca and Oradea to Vienna, via Budapest. And the revision introduces an additional requirement according to which, on the entire classic central railway network TEN-T, the passenger trains must run at at least 160 km/h," explained Valean in an opinion posted on the website of the EC Representation in Romania.

In total, the EU funding available for Romania for transport investments in the period 2021-2027 could be 12 billion euros.