Greece to join Budapest-Belgrade-Skopje-Thessaloniki railway project, says Serbian Minister
Belgrade, 13 February 2024 (MIA) – Serbian Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, Goran Vesić, said Tuesday that Greece is set to join the project for the construction of a high-speed railway connecting Hungary, Serbia, North Macedonia and Greece, which he said is a historic victory for the Western Balkans with European Corridor X once again becoming one of the most important European corridors, reports MIA’s Belgrade correspondent.
Vesić’s announcement of Greek participation in the project comes after a meeting between Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“We signed an agreement with North Macedonia with which we will jointly approach the EU in order to secure funding for the continuation of the high-speed railway to Skopje. We are already building the railway from Niš to Brestovac, then we have an additional 135 kilometers to Preševo and 50 kilometers from the border to Skopje, so that we can have a Skopje-Niš-Belgrade-Subotica-Budapest railway. And, since yesterday, Greece has also joined this project,” said Vesić.
Vesić said a railway which allows for speeds of 150km/h already exists from Athens to Thessaloniki, and it would only have to be modernized. Additionally, he said, a 70km railway would be built from Thessaloniki to Idomeni, the Greek border with North Macedonia.
“We will work together on connecting Thessaloniki and Skopje. With that, we will have a 1.512km long high-speed railway from Budapest to Athens,” stressed the Serbian Minister.
The Minister added that with the new railway, a trip from Belgrade to Thessaloniki, through Skopje, would take around six hours, without any stops at the borders. He said it would take 13 hours to travel from Hungary to Greece.
At the Serbian-Greek Economic Forum in Belgrade on Monday, Serbian Minister of Mining and Energy Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic, said Serbia also intends to construct a gas and oil pipeline reaching Greece through North Macedonia by the beginning of the EXPO 2027 specialized exposition in Belgrade.
