Kyiv, Warsaw agree on cooperation in building Via Carpatia highway

Ukrainian and Polish Infrastructure Ministers Volodymyr Omelyan and Andrzej Adamczyk have signed a memorandum on cooperation in the implementation of an international infrastructure project - the construction of the Via Carpatia transport corridor.

The document was signed in Przemysl on Sunday, October 22, in the presence of Verkhovna Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy and Marshal of the Sejm of Poland Marek Kuchcinski, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We are building roads and bridges, and this memorandum is a step towards the future," Omelyan said after the signing of the agreement. 

He also thanked the Polish side for the fact that both countries are looking towards Europe.

Adamczyk, in turn, said that the signing of the memorandum was evidence of Ukraine's support for this project. According to him, joining Kyiv's project will help include the Via Carpatia route in the network of the trans-European transport system TEN-T.

"This is very important, and it is our goal, because it gives us a chance to implement a project that will unite the Baltic Sea with the Aegean Sea and through a branch with the Adriatic and Black Seas. Via Carpatia will unite our regions and give them hope for dynamic economic development," Adamczyk said.

In 2006, an international route between Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary was formally formed on Poland's initiative at the level of transport ministers. In 2010, a declaration on the creation of the Via Carpatia route was signed. In March 2016, Ukraine and Turkey joined the project by signing in Warsaw a declaration on the construction of this international transport corridor from north to south of Europe.

The Via Carpatia transport corridor is to run from Lithuania's Klaipeda and Kaunas through Poland's Bialystok, Lublin and Rzeszow to the Slovak and Hungarian cities of Kosice and Debrecen, and from there to Romania's Constanta and Greece's Thessaloniki.

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