18.06.2014

18.06.2014

POST RELEASE

An international tender on restoration scenarios for the waterway E40 is now open

Bids are to be submitted from June 13 until July 11, 2014. The winner will receive up to 493.000 Euro to prepare three feasible options how to reconstruct the water route, which is now unnavigable on the Western Bug section between Warsaw and Brest. The most efficient and ecological scenario will be approved by the end of 2015. It will be used as a basis for planning improvements of hydro technical contructions.

Passing through Warsaw, Brest and Kyev, the waterway E40 links the ports of Gdansk and Kherson on the Baltic and Black Seas, respectively. Thanks to its restoration Belarus, Poland and Ukraine may get new opportunities to export more of their goods, increase transit shipping, and attract more tourists seeking river voyages.

The winner of the tender will have to conduct an analysis of the socioeconomic, institutional, legal and financial conditions influencing sustainable development of the waterway E40, whilst taking into consideration ecological repercussions and the technical peculiarities of the national sections of the water artery. For instance, hydro technical constructions on the Dnieper-Bug Canal, which is in Belarus, correspond to the fourth level under the European Agreement on Main Inland Waterways of International Importance classification. However, on the Vistula in Poland some technical objects only have the parameters of the second level of the same classification. In other words, large ships can sail only a limited number of the E40 sections.

The ecological aspect of the E40 restoration is especially important for Poland, since the Western Bug crosses the territories included in the European environmental network Natura2000. Therefore, some specialists even suggest building a new channel bypassing the ecologically vulnerable territories.

The participants of the tender have to meet the serious requirements. A successful candidate has to possess the experience of successful realization of at least two projects in the realm of water transportation. These two projects have to be partially or fully realized within the past ten years, and their budgets cannot be below 400.000 Euro. Another requirement is that no less than 20% of the employees at a candidate organization work in the fields related to the project (e.g. navigation, hydrology, civil engineering, aquatic and terrestrial biology).

The tender will be conducted in two stages. After an inititial handling, from 4 to 8 best applications (depending on the number of bids) will be selected. Their authors will be asked to present more detailed offers, on the basis of which final decisions will be made.

The tender is run by Commission on the development of the E40 waterway on the Dnieper-Vistula section, which will also supervise the preparation of scenarios for reconstruction of the water route. Commission includes scientists, specialists in water management, politicians and officials from Belarus, Poland and Ukraine; it was established thanks to the EU-funded project “Restoration of the E40 waterway on the Dnieper-Vistula section: from strategy to planning”. The initiative is important for the development of the entire European system of inland water communications. Hence in the future the EU could also provide further financial and technical support necessary for erecting infrastructural objects along the entire waterway E40.

More details about the tender rules can be found here:

http://dneprobug.by/e40restoration.html

Contact:
Andrei Rekesh, Secretary of Commission on the development of the E40 waterway on the Dnieper-Vistula section, tel.: +375 165 30 11 76, fax: +375 165 35 16 74, mobile: +375 44 785 13 58, e-mail: secretary@e40restoration.eu

The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of RUMCE “Dnepro-Bug Waterway” and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.