Slovenian Transport Minister Janez Bozic and his Italian counterpart Antonio di Pietro signed on Tuesday in Rome a memorandum of understanding on the construction of a railway section between the Italian port city of Trieste and the nearby Slovenian transport hub of Divaca.
By signing the memorandum on the section - part of the trans-European transport corridor between France's Lyon and the Ukrainian border - the two countries made the commitment to jointly apply for money from the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) fund. The two countries could receive co-funding to the tune of 50% for the necessary project documentation and up to 30% for construction, which is expected to begin in 2013, he added.
Bozic said preliminary activities were assessed at EUR 106m with Italy securing EUR 44m and Slovenia the remaining EUR 62m. Both countries are to get half of the TEN-T funds. The memorandum puts the value of construction works at EUR 139m. Bozic also said it was difficult to say when construction would begin and added that Slovenia wanted to begin construction of a second railway line between its seaport of Koper and Divaca, "a constituent part of the project", by 2015.
Upgrading the Koper-Divaca link would connect Slovenia's sole seaport to the 5th Pan-European Transport Corridor which stretches from Lyon to Turin, Venice, Trieste, Ljubljana, Budapest and the Hungarian-Ukrainian border.
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