The construction of a new rail-road bridge across the Danube between Romania and Bulgaria entered its next phase after Egis România was selected to carry out a feasibility study. The bridge will connect Giurgiu to Ruse and is part of a larger initiative to create an electrified rail link between Bucharest and the Bulgarian network.
Egis’ winning offer was set at 50.04 million RON (9.55 million euros), according to the Director General of CNAIR (Romania’s national road infrastructure company) Cristian Pistol. The company will have 23 months after signing the contract to complete the study. The signature is expected this or next week, provided that no objections are presented.
The feasibility study is partly funded by the Connecting Europe Facility 2, which allocated 6.9 million euros for it in 2024. This will be the second bridge connecting Giurgiu and Ruse, with the first one currently being renovated. The Giurgiu-Ruse II bridge will thus create redundancy for rail freight across the Danube, with costs for freight operators expected to significantly drop.
Improving Romania-Bulgaria connectivity
Related to this, Romania’s Minister of Transport Claudiu Stanciu, also gave an update on the renovation of the whole line between Romania’s capital and Bulgaria. Electrification of the line and the installation of ERTMS level 2 are the next steps. Stanciu specified that, so far, 7% of the project has been completed. “A long execution road ahead — but on a section where delay has already cost this corridor decades.”, he said on LinkedIn.
For its part, Bulgaria is also planning to build two new bridges across the Danube, between Nikopol (BG) and Turnu Magurele (RO) and between Silistra (BG) and Călărași (RO). All these projects have two main raisins d’etre. First, it will improve rail freight connectivity to and from the Greek ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki along the TEN-T corridor linking the Aegean, Black and Baltic Seas.
Secondly, it will also serve as an important artery for military mobility, as Stanciu also underlined. “The section also sits on a NATO movement axis toward the southern flank — making this dual-use infrastructure in the most direct sense”, he said on a LinkedIn post.
