Bulgaria, Serbia-Montenegro Simplify Border Control Procedures

05/05/2005

Bulgaria and Serbia-Montenegro agreed last month to simplify the border control procedures for passenger and freight trains crossing from one country into the other.

By Svetla Dimitrova for Southeast European Times in Sofia -- 05/05/05

The railway station in the Serbian town of Dimitrovgrad will operate as a border checkpoint on 1 January 2006. [File]

Bulgaria and Serbia-Montenegro signed an agreement last month that will establish the first common border checkpoint and railway station in the Balkans. The aim of the deal, signed on 15 April, is to reduce substantially the time passenger and freight trains currently need to cross from one country into the other. It is also expected to boost cargo traffic along the Belgrade-Sofia-Istanbul route.

The accord on border control and railway traffic procedures was signed by Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport and Communications Nikolay Vasilev and Serbian Capital Investment Minister Velimir Ilic. The Bulgarian and Serbian prime ministers, Simeon Saxe-Coburg and Vojislav Kostunica respectively, attended the signing ceremony in the Serbian border town of Dimitrovgrad.

The railway station in Dimitrovgrad, which will undergo renovation and upgrading, will start operating as a joint Bulgarian-Serbian border checkpoint on 1 January 2006.

Currently, a passenger train covers the distance between Belgrade and Sofia in about 9.5 hours. As of next year it will take passengers 6 hours to reach their destination, as they will no longer have to go through four different checks, taking between three and four hours. After the new setup takes effect, joint teams of police and customs officers of the two countries will complete the checks in a single operation, taking no more than 30 minutes. Likewise, the stay of freight trains at the border is expected to be reduced from 12 hours to 5 hours.

Bulgarian and Serbian experts anticipate a considerable increase in cargo traffic along the Belgrade-Sofia-Istanbul route of Pan-European Corridor 10 as a result of simplifying border control procedures. Officials in Sofia also believe that the number of foreign tourists traveling by train to the Bulgarian Black Sea resorts is likely to grow.

Serbia-Montenegro was the third-largest contributor of foreign tourists to Bulgaria in 2004, when nearly 577,000 of its citizens chose to spend their holidays there.

The two railway lines, running in parallel to each other, symbolise the paths of the two countries to progress, modernisation and to Europe, the Bulgarian state news agency quoted Saxe-Coburg as saying at the ceremony in Dimitrovgrad. Kostunica said the initiative demonstrated that borders can be opened in Southeast Europe and that European borders can be created in this region as well.

The last two years have been marked by a considerable improvement in the trade and economic co-operation between Bulgaria and Serbia-Montenegro, the Bulgarian government said in a statement. The volume of bilateral trade has jumped by 50 per cent on average, reaching almost 309m euros in 2004.