Pelješki Bridge Will Become Particularly Relevant Before Elections

The construction of the Pelješki Bridge, which would connect the Croatian South with the rest of the country, is becoming a political issue that will be most manipulated before the elections in both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, according to the Ministry of Transport and Communications of BiH for the Patria News Agency.

- This issue will be particularly manipulated before the elections - say the Ministry of Communications and Transport of BiH.

BiH has its clear stance regarding the construction of the Pelješki Bridge, which is primarily the respect of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Recently, Minister Damir Hadžić stated that Croatia does not have the money to build the Pelješki Bridge on its own, and the European Commission has similar conditions as BiH when it comes to construction.

- Croatia hopes for help from the European Commission and believes they will co-finance it. The Croatian Government and Hrvatske ceste (Croatian Roads) hope to be ready at the beginning of 2015 for the start of works. However, we doubt that this will be possible to achieve - say the Ministry of Transport and Communications of BiH.

In Croatia, they calculated that the construction would cost more than 220 million euros, but they also admit that they cannot say by the end of next year how much and in what way the European Commission would participate in the financing. Ideally, according to their considerations, would be if Croatia could get 75 percent co-financing from the EU.

BiH has given certain comments regarding the feasibility study and pre-feasibility study, but the French consultants who worked on the pre-feasibility study did not give much consideration to these comments.

- We have problems at sea with Croatia and we must resolve them. Problems arose the moment Croatia unilaterally took over the connecting straight lines from Yugoslavia, thereby acquiring for itself the complete sovereignty that Yugoslavia had in the part of the sea, which partly belongs to BiH as well - added the ministry.