During the 28th Economic Forum held in Krynica, the ministries of transport from Poland, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine and Hungary signed a Joint Statement on the development of transport infrastructure in the Central and Eastern Europe.
The parties agreed to support further dialogue and strengthen the cooperation regarding each of the significant investment projects such as “Via Carpatia”, “Rail Baltica”, “Via Baltica”, and to pay particular attention to the rail and road cross-border sections between the parties of the Joint Statement in the framework of their national investment plans.
Poland has proposed to develop the Central Transport Hub close to Warsaw as this vision is significant not only to Poland, but also to the entire region.
Lithuanian minister, Rokas Masiulis, said that an important detail of this vision is to make this hub accessible from any part of Poland in 2 hours, so it allows expecting higher speed on the railway line “Rail Baltica” on the Polish territory. After implementing the vision the journey by train from Vilnius to Warsaw would take 3 hours approximately.
Ukraine’s minister Volodymyr Omelyan said that it is extremely important to jointly discuss and implement infrastructure and, connecting with the EU, is not only about roads, but also railways. The minister hopes that this year will start a new direct train connection between Mukachevo and Budapest. “It is almost ready to launch and will be successful and high demand on the market. On September 28, we are launching a direct rail connection between Kyiv, Minsk, Riga and Vilnius”, Volodymyr Omelyan explained.
In 2015, Ukraine has announced its intention to implement a new transport corridor connecting Ukraine, Ukrainian Black Sea ports with the EU and started to implement it in 2016. “We hope to finish all work on a new transport corridor that will connect Poland with Ukraine and the Baltic Sea with the Black Sea, by 2020,” the minister said.
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