Overview
The new Western Balkans - Eastern Mediterranean (WBEM) Corridor links central European Member States with the ports of the Adriatic and East Mediterranean Seas via the Western Balkans. It runs through the eight EU Member States of Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and Italy, as well as Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania and North Macedonia. The corridor connects all capital cities except Vienna and Rome.
The WBEM Corridor is multimodal but it does not include any inland waterways. Cyprus also does not have a railway network.
The WBEM European Transport Corridor contains parts of the former Orient/East-Med corridor (in Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus) as well as of the Rail Freight Corridors as described in the previous section. It overlaps in parts with the Mediterranean, the Rhine – Danube, the Baltic Sea – Black Sea – Aegean Sea and the Baltic Sea – Adriatic Sea corridors.
Challenges
Rail compliance is rather problematic on the central and south-eastern parts of the corridor and characterised by the unbalanced, slow or in cases non-existent implementation of ERTMS and gaps in electrification. Low commercial speeds remain the main challenge for long-distance freight rail. Rail-road terminals (in future: Multimodal Freight Terminals) are either non-existent or operate poorly due to outdated infrastructure and handling equipment.
Road transport remains the most used mode of transport, with sufficient progress of the upgrades to motorways/express roads and provision of alternative fuel facilities. On the other hand, the provision of safe and secure parking facilities for trucks is lagging behind in south-eastern countries.
The most important challenge in maritime ports remain missing or poor road and rail last-mile hinterland connections, and the provision of bunkering facilities for alternative fuels is progressing slowly.
Finally, airports lack either a high-speed rail connection or even a direct rail connection and the provision of alternative fuels for aircraft remains a challenge.
A prominent issue affecting the timely completion is the delay in the implementation of projects. In this past decade, only a fraction of the planned investment has been made, and mainly in smaller projects, while large-scale ones have been delayed repeatedly. Particular attention should also be paid to cross-border projects, whose implementation is also experiencing significant delays.
Transport infrastructure in the Western Balkans is much less developed than in the EU, due to lack of investment over several decades. Even where major infrastructure projects have been undertaken, resources are usually not planned for adequate maintenance. For roads major improvements are needed in traffic management, maintenance, and road safety. Railways are heavily dependent on fossil fuels and in 2020 less than half of the networks were electrified.
Mr Arunas Jurevicius, Adviser of the European Coordinator
Arunas [dot] JUREVICIUS
ec [dot] europa [dot] eu (Arunas[dot]JUREVICIUS[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)
+32 (0)2 29 59099
Postal address:
Orient/East-Med CNC / TEN-T
Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport
Rue de Mot 28
1049 Brussels
Belgium
Information Note
Information Note CEF Call 2014 Orient East Med
Maps
Orient-East Med compliance maps
Policy Documents
Political rail cross border Declaration signed
Workplans
1st Orient - East Med TEN-T Corridor work plan
2nd Orient - East Med TEN-T Corridor work plan
3rd Orient - East Med TEN-T Corridor work plan
4th Orient - East Med TEN-T Corridor work plan
5th Orient - East Med TEN-T Corridor work plan