European Union to provide 45 million for for Moldova's better connection to Romania

Chisinau, 26 October /MOLDPRES/ - The European Union has signed three agreements on grant worth almost 45 million euros, within the  Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) – Transports, for a better connection of Moldova with EU, MOLDPRES informs, citing AGERPRES.   

The goal of the agreements is to improve the transport connections between Moldova and Romania along the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). The projects will modernize the transport infrastructure at the road border crossing points Ungheni, Albita-Leuseni and Reni-Giurgiulesti-Galati. These investments will consolidate the EU-Ukraine solidarity corridors – the routes used since the blocking by Russia of the Ukrainian Black Sea ports, in order to carry goods exported and imported by Ukraine and Moldova.      

„Due to the close cooperation between Romania and Moldova, we can start today the phase of implementation of three quite important projects, which will significantly enhance the capacity and will facilitate the traffic flows along the border between Romania and Moldova. It is important that these projects should be implemented quickly, as they will get even close Moldova, candidate country, to the European Union, giving its citizens and enterprises an easier and quicker access to our domestic market,’’ European Commissioner for Transport Adina Valean said.      

Thus, 18 km of road will be modernized on the Romanian side, in order to improve the customs services at the Ungheni border crossing point. At the same time, Moldova will build a new access road and a new border crossing point. The infrastructure existing on both sides of the Albita-Leuseni border crossing point will be modernized, in order to improve the management of the transport flows. Also, the final project will extend the area for car parks from Giurgiulesti and will purchase equipment needed for the customs control.    

The transport relations between EU and Moldova were discussed at a 25 October meeting between Commissioner Adina Valean and Prime Minister Dorin Recean.

At the same time, a new application for proposals within CEF – Transports was launched, which will make available over 7 billion euros for railway, road infrastructure projects, on interior navigable ways and in sea and interior ports. Thus, for the first time ever, entities from Moldova can directly register, in order to request financing on behalf of EU within this application for proposals, following the signing of the Agreement on association with CEF in the beginning of this year.