Greece, Bulgaria and Romania sign €22.8 billion plan to link the Aegean with Moldova and Ukraine

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Athens, Sofia and Bucharest have signed a joint action plan for 25 priority transport projects worth about €22.8 billion, aimed at building a continuous network between the Aegean Sea, the Danube and the Black Sea, with onward links toward Moldova and Ukraine.

The plan was signed in Brussels on 29 September 2026. It follows a memorandum of understanding agreed by the three governments in December 2025 under the Black Sea–Aegean Sea Corridor Platform. Of 53 projects under discussion, 25 were selected as priorities at an advanced stage of readiness. Funding is only partly secured. Rail accounts for the largest share.

Priority works include modernisation and electrification of the Ruse–Giurgiu–Bucharest railway, targeted for 2030, and a new combined road-and-rail bridge over the Danube at Ruse–Giurgiu, targeted for 2032. Also listed are upgrades on the Burgas–Varna–Ruse line and design work on further Danube crossings at Silistra–Călărași and Nikopol–Turnu Măgurele, with financing envisaged through 2034. On the Greek side, the plan covers the Alexandroupoli–Pythio–Ormenio railway, the Mouries–Promachonas–Kulata section and the rail connection to the port of Thessaloniki.

The network is organised along three axes. A western route would run from Athens and Thessaloniki through Promachonas and Kulata to Sofia, then via Vidin–Calafat and Craiova to Bucharest. A central route would run from Thessaloniki and Alexandroupoli through Ormenio and Svilengrad to Ruse and Giurgiu, then to Bucharest, with extensions toward Moldova and Ukraine. Officials present the scheme as civilian infrastructure that also supports military mobility on NATO’s eastern flank, and as part of the wider Baltic–Black Sea–Aegean corridor of the EU’s TEN-T network. A completed land link of this kind would reduce reliance on the Turkish straits for freight moving between the Aegean and Central and Eastern Europe.

Separately, the United States is backing the expansion of Elefsina, west of Athens, as a logistics and commercial alternative to Piraeus, which is majority-controlled by China’s COSCO. The US International Development Finance Corporation has committed a $125 million loan to ONEX for the acquisition, rehabilitation and expansion of the Elefsina shipyards. In November 2025, after a meeting with Development Minister Takis Theodorikakos, US Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle said Washington looked forward to the use of Elefsina as a logistics hub. She has also called COSCO’s acquisition of Piraeus unfortunate and argued that another port should be built to offset Chinese interests there. Greek legislation has been advanced to let ONEX extend the site beyond shipbuilding into commercial, logistics, port, energy and defence activity. Elefsina is not yet an operating rival to Piraeus, and it is not formally part of the tri-national action plan, though both sit in the same debate over alternative corridors into the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

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