Pelješac Bridge

Austrian construction company Strabag AG filed a complaint on Monday about the bid made by the Chinese Road and Bridge Corporation to build the Peljesac Bridge in southern Croatia.

Croatia's state roads company, Croatian Roads, announced on Friday that the China Road and Bridge Corporation is to build the Peljesac Bridge, the biggest infrastructural project in the country.

The offer from the Chinese state-owned construction company was cheaper than that of Austria's Strabag - 279 million euros in comparison to 351 million euros.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Thursday stressed that Croatia will press on with the construction of the construction of the Peljesac Bridge despite Bosnian objections.

Gabrijela Zalac, Croatia's minister for regional development, said on Sunday evening that construction of the Peljesac Bridge, which will connect two pieces of Croatian territory that are currently divided by a 14-kilometre stretch of Bosnian coast, will not be stopped.

Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia have traded threats over the construction of the Peljesac Bridge that is designed to connect the Croatian mainland with its southernmost region, cutting across the narrow exit from Bosnia's only coastal town of Neum to the open sea.

Croatia on Wednesday announced that plans to build a long-awaited bridge over the Adriatic sea, connecting the Peljesac peninsula to the mainland, will get underway next year.

An idea dating back to the late 1990s, the 2.4-km-long bridge should connect up two parts of Croatia divided by a 14-km stretch of territory belonging to Bosnia.

Croatian governments have long been announcing a new start to construction of the Peljesac Bridge, a key communications structure that would circumvent Bosnia's short coastline and connect the southern Dubrovnik region with the rest of Croatia.