Bosnia Opens New Stretch of Pan-European Corridor

A tunnel more than three kilometres long and a six-kilometre stretch of highway between Sarajevo and Zenica will open on Monday, marking another milestone in the strategic plan to connect a road corridor from Croatia via Bosnia to the Adriatic sea.

Connecting Sarajevo and the central town of Zenica by highway will ease this busy route and shorten the travel time between the two towns to about 30 minutes.

Before the highway was constructed, the journey took more than an hour.

The March 1 tunnel, named after date of Bosnia's independence referendum, has been under construction for years, first by two Slovenian companies, which went bankrupt, and later by a consortium of Bosnian companies.

The new tunnel is the longest in Bosnia and is one of the most important infrastructure projects to be completed since the 1992-5 war. It cost more than 62 million euro, JP Autoceste, the Federation highwa company, told Balkan Insight.

Another part of the highway, from Sarajevo to the south, will soon be open for use - the section towards Tarcin, which is on the way to Mostar in Herzegovina.

Corridor Vc, or 5c, of which Bosnia is part, is designed to connect Kiev in Ukraine to Slovakia and Hungary and run through Bosnia to the Croatian Adriatic.

The pan-European corridor consists of three branches, of which Vc follows a route from Budapest in Hungary to Ploce on the Croatian coast, interrelating en route with Corridor X, running from Zagreb to Belgrade.

The longest stretch of Vc lies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, covering 335 kilometres in all, of which around a quarter has been constructed so far.

Aside of the current 50 kilometres that are already open, and the additional 10 kilometres that open on August...

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