Danube bridge could be built more quickly, argues EU envoy

Date: 14/03/02

By David Cronin

A CONTROVERSIAL bridge over the Danube could be built considerably faster than is currently planned, according to the EU's chief representative in the Balkans.

Austrian politician Erhard Busek said he did not agree with consultants' predictions that it would take 26 months to construct the €180 million Vidin-Calafat bridge in Bulgaria.

Based on his experience with major infrastructure projects as former deputy-mayor in Vienna, he believes it could be complete within 18 months.

The project, due to get under way next year, was the theme of a sharp broadside by Busek's predecessor as head of the 'stability pact' for south-east Europe, Bodo Hombach.

Shortly after stepping down from his post in January, Hombach singled out the delay in reopening the Danube to navigation as one of the worst failures of putting pledges into action.

Although all 15 member states agreed in February 2000 to clear the Danube of wreckage caused during NATO's bombardment of Serbia a year previously, it was late 2001 before the first reopening of a shipping channel in the river. Relations between Hombach and External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten were extremely strained during his two-year stint as stability pact head, with Hombach accusing the Commission of 'openly trying to hinder' his work.

Busek is eager to avoid the same problems. Speaking ahead of this week's meeting of EU foreign ministers, he said his relations with Patten and enlargement chief Günter Verheugen are 'at their best'.

He could 'live with' a US decision to trim its contribution to the Balkans by €686 million this year, he added.

But he hopes to travel to Washington shortly with Michael Steiner, the UN administrator in Kosovo, to lobby for continued American support for the region.

• Danish officer Sven Christian Frederiksen has been appointed head of the European police mission in Bosnia. He will be in charge of the 500-strong team due to be sent to the Balkan state, when the mandate of the UN-led international police task force in Bosnia runs out at the end of this year. A member of his country's security forces since 1971, Frederiksen was named as the UN's police commissioner in Kosovo in 1999.

A controversial bridge over the Danube could be built considerably faster than is currently planned, according to the EU's chief representative in the Balkans, Erhard Busek.