Bulgaria`s Transport Ministry announced Tuesday the construction of a second bridge linking Bulgaria to Romania over the Danube will be delayed by at least four months, as no work project has been submitted for approval at the Regional Development Ministry. According to the Transport Minister Petar Mutafchiev, legislation differences between Bulgaria and Romania are the main obstacles before the project.

The Spanish company FCC Construccion, which is to build the infrastructure on the Bulgarian side, failed to submit the required documents due to bureaucracy problems and delayed geological researches in Romania, the director of the ministry department dealing with the project, Simeon Evtimov, said. In October, experts reported that land litigations were delaying the building of Danube Bridge II. Problems related to land expropriation process then postponed construction works by two months. Works at the 1971 meters-long bridge should have started by March 2008 and finished in 2010.

In 2000, Bulgaria and Romania signed the agreement to build the Vidin-Calafat bridge, which would cost a total of EUR 225.8 M. The bridge will link the Bulgarian Danube port of Vidin to the Romanian city of Calafat by road and rail and is a key element of a European transport corridor from the German city of Dresden to Istanbul in Turkey.