Connectivity in the Balkans is important in order to meet the new challenges stemming from the military conflict in Ukraine and the states in the region can offer solutions also applicable wo Western Europe, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Policies and Transport and Communications Minister Hristo Aleksiev said at the annual meeting of the Delphi Economic Forum in Greece, as quoted by his ministry on Thursday.
“The war has provoked inflation, an energy crisis and social tensions, not only in the region but across Europe. Some of the main logistical routes are changing, the Northern Corridor is practically functioning no longer. So we need to react very quickly, with more regional cooperation projects in energy, transport and digital connectivity,” the deputy prime minister said.
The initiatives must be suitable to attract private investors because we cannot rely only on public resources, he explained. In the transport sector, traffic should be diverted from roads to railways, which is also the easiest way to follow the European Union’s decarbonisation policy.
Bulgaria is very active in building vertical connections in the North-South direction in order to ensure access of the Northern European countries to the high seas and the ports in Northern Greece, Aleksiev added.
The development of the so-called Middle Corridor from China, Kazakhstan through the Black and Caspian Seas to Europe is very topical. Here Bulgaria and Greece can cooperate very well to meet the incoming traffic along the Middle Corridor through the Sea2Sea project and the joint management of the Bulgarian ports on the Black Sea and the Greek ports on the Mediterranean, the Deputy Prime Minister summarized.
Source: bta
