Poland and Slovakia on Monday signed an agreement to link Poland’s S19 expressway with Slovakia’s planned new R4 road as part of efforts to create a trans-European transport route known as Via Carpathia, Polish news media reported.

Poland's Adamczyk (right) and Slovakia's Érsek (left) shake hands on the new agreements at the Polish-Slovak border crossing of Barwinek-Vyšný Komárnik on Monday. Photo: PAP/Darek Delmanowicz

Poland’s Infrastructure Minister Andrzej Adamczyk and Slovak Transport Minister Árpád Érsek put their signatures under the agreement during a ceremony at the Polish-Slovak border crossing of Barwinek-Vyšný Komárnik, the PAP news agency reported.

It quoted Adamczyk as saying during the signing ceremony that Poland and Slovakia were working closely together to modernise transfrontier road infrastructure.

“The aim of our efforts is to create convenient and competitive transit links in terms of both road and railway transport,” he said, as quoted by PAP.

Adamczyk added that the Via Carpathia, of which both roads will eventually be part, would help spur business in this part of Europe as well as the European Union as a whole, PAP reported.

Poland and Slovakia on Monday also agreed to build a new cross-border bridge between Poland’s Chyżne and Slovakia’s Trstená to improve traffic on the E77 international road. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2021, according to PAP.

Via Carpathia

The Via Carpathia is a planned international route that would run from the Lithuanian cities of Klaipeda and Kaunas via Poland’s Białystok, Lublin and Rzeszów to Košice in Slovakia and Debrecen in Hungary and further on to Romania, Bulgaria and Greece.

The route would stretch all the way to the Romanian port of Constanţa on the Black Sea and Salonika in Greece on the Aegean Sea, according to officials.

Poland and Ukraine last year signed a memorandum to work together in building the Via Carpathia route.

Poland's Adamczyk said at the time that the Via Carpathia could become part of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), a network of roads, railway lines, inland waterways, seaports, and airports throughout the European Union.

(gs/pk)

Source: PAP