Baltic Sea – Black Sea – Aegean Sea corridor

Overview

The newly created Baltic Sea – Black Sea – Aegean Sea (BBA) European Transport Corridor (ETC) links European Member States from the far north to the far south of Europe with the maritime interfaces of the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Aegean Sea part of the Mediterranean Seas, through the countries of Ukraine and Moldova. It includes 13 countries, namely the 11 EU Member States Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus, as well as two neighbouring countries Ukraine and Moldova. It connects almost all capital cities of the BBA countries, except for Slovakia, where it connects the second largest city Košice, Hungary where it connects to the second largest city Debrecen, and Ukraine where it connects to Lviv.

This corridor starts in the north in Finland from its capital Helsinki and in the south in Cyprus from its capital Nicosia. Heading south from Helsinki we find the Estonian capital Tallinn, continueing in two branches south to Latvian’s capital Riga, branching out to the Baltic Sea ports in Latvia and Lithaunia and on to Kaunas and Vilnius in Lithuania. In Poland the corridor enters from Lithuania to Elk and connects the ports of Gdansk and Gdynia going south via Warsaw and Lublin, it passes Krakov and near Rzeszow it branches out to Lviv (Ukraine) continueing from there towards Odessa at the Black Sea as well as via Romania south to Bucharest and east towards the Moldovan capital of Chisinau also connecting to Odessa. In the south of Poland two branches cross the border with Slovakia connecting north of Kosice before connecting into Hungary and Romania where it branches out in Oradea south east to Bucarest and on to the the port of Constanta and south west to Timisoara. From there there are two branches going south to Bulgaria, one western branch via Vidin to the capital Sofia and one eastern branch connecting to the Black Sea port of Burgas going south to the border with Turkey. Both branches continue into Greece to the Aegean Sea ports of Thessaloniki and Athens. The BBA Corridor finally ends in Cyprus (maritime connection) connecting via the island of Crete to the port of Limassol.

The BBA Corridor countries mainly comprise of railways, roads/highways, airports, sea ports and multi-modal terminals, as well as a number of identified urban nodes. No inland waterway and corresponding inland ports are included in this Corridor. The major exception is Cyprus, where no rail infrastructure is deployed.

The new BBA Corridor contains parts of the former Orient/East-Med Core Network Corridor (in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus) as well as parts of several Rail Freight Corridors. In the north – south and south – north connection in Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Romania and Slovakia there are large pieces of infrastructure part of this new corridor that were before not part of any Core Network Corridor. With regard to other European Transport Corridors, it overlaps in parts with the Baltic Sea – Adriatic Sea, North Sea – Baltic, Mediterranean, Rhine – Danube and Western Balkans – Eastern Mediterranean Corridor.