Poland, Ukraine agree to build trans-European route together

The memorandum of cooperation was inked on Sunday by Poland’s Infrastructure and Construction Minister Andrzej Adamczyk and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Omelyan in the presence of Polish and Ukrainian parliamentary Speakers, Radio Poland reports.

During the signing ceremony in the southeastern Polish city of Przemyśl, Poland’s Adamczyk said that the Via Carpathia route was a key project for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as well as other regions that would benefit from the initiative.

Adamczyk also suggested that the Via Carpathia route could become part of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), a network of roads, railway lines, inland waterways, seaports, and airports throughout the European Union.

Ukraine’s Omelyan said that the memorandum marked a “step into the future” for both countries.

Via Carpathia is a planned international route that would run from the Lithuanian cities of Klaipeda and Kaunas via Poland’s Białystok, Lublin and Rzeszów to Kosice in Slovakia and Debrecen in Hungary and further on to Romania, Bulgaria and Greece.

It is to stretch all the way to the Romanian port of Constanţa on the Black Sea and Salonika in Greece on the Aegean Sea. (gs/pk)