Land litigations are delaying the building of the second bridge linking Bulgaria to Romania over the Danube river at Vidin-Calafat, Bulgarian newspaper Dnevnik reported.

Bulgaria's Transport Ministry expects to receive an independent study by November 5 regarding the value of some 20 plots of land and is negotiating with their owners to purchase them, deputy Transports minister Vesela Gospodinova announced.

According to Dnevnik, the problems related to the expropriation process postponed the signing of the contract for the construction of connected infrastructure by tho months.

That is because the Vidin city hall, which should have offered land for Transport Ministry procurement, separated some of the plots and sold some 30,000 square meters of the land necessary for the construction of the bridge, Dnevnik says.

Works at the 1971 meters-long bridge should start by March 2008 and finished in 2010. The total value of the bridge amounts to EUR 225.8 M.

The bridge will link the Bulgarian Danube port of Vidin to the Romanian city of Calafat by road and rail. It is a key element of a European transport corridor from the German city of Dresden to Istanbul in Turkey.

The facility will be 1971 meter-long, including a road and a rail bridges with two lanes in each direction as well as one railway track.

Bulgaria and Romania, which both joined the European Union on January 1, signed an agreement to build the Vidin-Calafat bridge in 2000, but various obstacles delayed the project.

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