The European Commission removed the restriction of construction of roads under the operative programs “Regional development” and “Transport”, announced the chairman of the Overseeing council of the National agency “Road infrastructure” Ivan Atanasov after the inspection of the construction site of the Liulin highway.

The department for “Regional development” received a letter yesterday which informed the government that they can start procedures under both programs.

501 million leva will be provided to the operative program “Regional development”, and nearly 1 billion euro – to the operative program “Transport”, announced the press center of “Road infrastructure”.

Early last year, the European Commission restricted the deals under both operative programs because of the scandal surrounding the previous manager of the road agency Veselin Georgiev. The deals with his brothers, which costed 120 million leva to the funds, made the European Commission stop all payments for Bulgaria under these programs.

Now, according to the management of the agency, the funds are unblocked “because of the significant improvement in effectiveness”.

The first 5 km. of the highway section between the Sofia district Liulin and the village Malo Buchino will be finished and ready for public use by the end of July. The executives of the project – the Turkish company “Mapa Chingiz” – promise that they will be ready with 12 km. of the highway by the end of this year, and the whole highway will be complete by the end of 2010.

The deadline for the project is April 30th 2010. After completing the first 5 kilometres, the company will start repair works on the road through Vladaya. The deadline for this part of the project is October 30th 2009.

The construction of the “Liulin” highway costs 148 million euro. 75% of them were provided by the ISPA program, and the other 25% come from the national budget.