The Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Monday that the entire budget of the national road construction program amounts to approximately PLN 260 bn (EUR 57.36 bn). He recalled that “ so much money was never before spent on roads as it is now in the areas of Subcarpathia, Lublin region and Lesser Poland.”

He visited the construction site of a bridge over the San River in Nowa Wieś (Podkarpackie Province), which will be a part of the Via Carpathia road connection.

Via Carpatia is to run from the cities of Klaipeda and Kaunas in Lithuania via Białystok, Lublin, Rzeszów in Poland, Košice in Slovakia, Debrecen in Hungary, and then to Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. It will continue, among others, to the Romanian port of Constanța on the Black Sea coast and the Greek Thessaloniki on the Aegean Sea coast.

“To create new development perspectives, we must create new connections, such as Via Carpathia,” the PM said. He added that such an investment makes great development perspectives for entrepreneurs, including Polish ones.

The Infrastructure Minister Andrzej Adamczyk assessed that “Via Carpatia will be the engine of development not only of the regions of Lubelskie and Podkarpackie, but also Warmia, Mazury and Podlasie.”.

Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Rafał Weber added that the Via Carpatia route would connect Rzeszów with Lublin at the beginning of next year. “In the coming years, we will connect other parts of the provinces,” he announced.



As he said, Polish roads change very quickly. “Thanks to the [Polish] New Deal and a decade of investments, they will change even faster in the coming years,” Mr Weber assessed.

The Bridge over the river San in Nowa Wieś, southern Poland, is being built as part of the construction of the S19 expressway Zdziary-Rudnik nad Sanem. This section is about 9 km long. The bridge construction technology “the overhang” in Nowa Wieś is one of the most modern in the world. Poland’s part of the Via Carpatia will be over 700 km long and will run through the Podlaskie, Mazowieckie, Lubelskie and Podkarpackie provinces.

The idea of ​​creating the Via Carpatia route was initiated in 2006 in Łańcut (Podkarpackie Province, south-east Poland) by the ministers of Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary under the patronage of the then President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczyński.

The Government Program for the Construction of National Roads for 2014-2023 (with a perspective until 2025) indicates the construction of the Via Carpatia route as the main investment priority.