Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic visited the Peljesac Bridge building site on Monday, announcing that the construction of the bridge and access roads would be finished by June 2022.

“We are roughly a year and a half away from the completion of this project that will connect the south of Croatia (with the rest of the country), which is our main goal: to ensure the integrity of the country’s territory,” Plenkovic said.

The project, worth €550 million, including €357 million funded by the EU, is currently under construction by the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) consortium. The largest infrastructure project in Croatia in years, the bridge is intended to provide direct road access from the mainland to the southernmost part of the country by circumventing a short strip of coastal land belonging to Bosnia and Herzegovina near the Peljesac peninsula.

“This is a project of strategic importance and we are glad that it will be finished a year and a half from now,” Plenkovic said.

The CEO of the state-owned Hrvatske Ceste road management company, Josip Skoric, said that the works were “progressing well.”

He added that Peljesac would be connected to the mainland via the Chinese-built bridge by November this year, and that the bridge would be “equipped” by January 2022. After a road junction at the nearby village of Brijest is completed, the bridge is expected to open to passenger cars and trucks up to 7.5 tonnes in March or April 2022.