Romania Plans to Double Highway Network

Romania plans to build around 725 km of new highways and 1,809 km of express roads in the next 15 years, spending around 28.6 billion euro on expanding the country's poor road infrastructure, the Transport Ministry announced in its new "Master Plan".

"Some of the money, around 6 billion euro, will come from the EU. The rest should come as loans from international lenders as well as from the special excise for diesel fuel, the road tax or from public-private partnerships," the Transport Minister, Ioan Rus, said.

"The last excuse we can use is that we don't have money," Rus added.

In a related development, Prime Minister Victor Ponta on Wednesday said a political consensus for a minimum of 10 years must be reached for these projects to be realised.

"Without a document signed by the President and the leaders of all political parties to support the Transport Master Plan and offer long-term guarantees, there's no use in transport experts starting work on these infrastructure plans, as they will not get the financing they need," Ponta said.

The Balkan country currently has less than 700 km of completed motorway - not much for a country if its size, and far from the kind of network seen in many countries of Western Europe.

Romania opened 50 km of highway last year, less than half what it achieved in 2013.

In recent years, with help from the European Union, governments have tried to improve the situation, but none of the started projects has been fully finished yet.

Some projects had to be postponed or cancelled due to late payments from the government, or were stalled because of delays in finalising the design of the highways.

In May 2013, after ten years of irregular work and with only 52km of the so-called...