Greece: to the Black Sea – by train

Sea2sea is a grandiose project that will connect Greece with the Black Sea. Recently, an ambitious mega-project has come to the fore, which concerns the railway connection of the northern ports of Greece with the ports of Bulgaria and Romania.

Currently, the main route connecting the Aegean Sea with the Black Sea region passes through the Bosphorus. It is along this route that cargo flows from the Far East are sent to central and western Europe and vice versa. Experience, however, has shown that the Bosporus Canal is an “ambush”, with many hours (or even many days) delays, high transit fees, and the risk of accidents due to the “influx” of large and overloaded ships.

The Sea2Sea project (or the Rail TKABVR project) is a railway connection between the ports of the northeast Aegean – Thessaloniki, Kavala and Alexandroupolis – with their Black Sea counterparts (Burgas and Varna) and the Danube (Ruse). The connection is planned to be provided by a modern railway capable of serving high speed trains.

The big advantage of the route is that it can mean the creation of a “land bridge” around the Bosphorus in order to increase cargo flows from the Far East to Central and Western Europe and vice versa. It means that freight transport will be carried out faster, at lower cost and, of course, with less risk. The total cost of the project may reach 6.5 billion euros, and if financing is secured, it will be carried out by a joint Greek-Bulgarian company.

Sea2Sea is high on the agenda as Greek and Bulgarian governments. OThe discussion of the project took place on November 3 during the meeting of the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport of Greece, Kostas Karamanlis, with the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Transport and Communications of Bulgaria, Hristo Aleksiev, the Minister of Economy and Industry of Bulgaria, Nikola Stoyanov, the Minister of Energy of Bulgaria, Rozen Hristov, and the Ambassador of Bulgaria, Valentin Poryazov.

“The Sea2Sea project will soon cease to be just an ambitious plan on the map. We are resolutely moving forward to make this a reality. Time demands it more than ever. After all, there is a strong international investment interest in the port of Alexandroupolis, which can become another area of ​​cooperation with our northern neighbors,” Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Kostas Karamanlis said at the conference.

It is worth noting that the project dates back more than five years, starting with a memorandum of cooperation signed in September 2017 between Greece and Bulgaria by the then Prime Ministers Alexis Tsipras and Boyko Borisov. The project was planned to be launched in 2018, but efforts to create a joint Greek-Bulgarian multinational company did not bring results. The Sea2Sea megaproject has today been “pulled out of the box” by the current government, which has taken concrete action both on a bilateral basis with Bulgaria and within its borders.

Last month, the Greek government proposed to immediately appoint new task force (coordination) members from both states to update the existing preliminary feasibility study and then formulate a draft agreement for the consortium.

It should be noted that within the framework of a large package of railway projects worth a total of 4 billion euros, which ERGOSE promotes through a competitive dialogue method, two projects are included that are directly related to Sea2Sea. These are the sections of Thessaloniki – Nea Karvali – Toxotes (1.69 billion euros) and Alexandroupolis – Ormenio (1.07 billion euros).

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