Croatia on Tuesday (July 26) officially opened controversial Pelješac Bridge that connects the exclave region of Dubrovnik to the rest of the country.
The 55-meter-high (180 feet) and 2.4-kilometer-long (1.5 miles) bridge between the villages of Komarna and Brijesta was built off the coast of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Neum, the only city in Bosnia with a coast and the officials claimed that the bridge violates the state’s sovereign access to open seas in the Adriatic.
Croatian President Zoran Milanovic, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and many senior officials attended the ceremony.
The bridge was built by Croatia, although the exact borders between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia have not been determined.
It was funded by the European Union and was built by the Chinese consortium China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC).
CRBC in 2018 won an international bid to construct the bridge. The €420 million ($500 million) construction is 85% financed by the EU and is a rare Chinese project in Europe that went through a regular bidding process.
