The road bridge over the Prut at Ungheni has reached 56% physical completion, Romania’s National Company for Road Infrastructure Administration (CNAIR) announced on Tuesday, 20 October. The company also gave the deadline: “The contractual deadline for completing the works is December 2027.”
According to CNAIR, 33 machines and 50 workers are deployed on site. The contractor, Ness Proiect, is working on the bridge substructure and the access roads: improving the foundation ground and stripping the topsoil to prepare the next stages. At the same time, work continues on the Moldovan bank on the steel deck, the structure that will carry the roadway.
What the ministry reported in August
On 11 August, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Regional Development in Chișinău reported 55% progress and the start of assembly of the first deck section on the Moldovan bank. On the bank in Iași County, the deck was then 70% assembled on both carriageways. The ministry’s figure and CNAIR’s come from different institutions, and neither says whether they measure the same thing.
When the contract was signed, CNAIR’s director general said the contractor, Ness Proiect Europe, had 151.68 million lei, excluding VAT, and 24 months: six for design and 18 for construction. CNAIR’s latest announcement does not say from what date the December 2027 deadline is calculated, nor whether it covers the whole project, including the access roads, or the bridge alone.
The contract is funded from European funds and links the Unirii Motorway (A8) in Romania to the roads of the Republic of Moldova. According to the ministry in Chișinău, it is the first motorway-standard road bridge over the Prut in more than 60 years.
Even when finished, the bridge will not open to traffic on its own: to actually cross the Prut, a customs post and a border checkpoint still have to be built, with a 2028 horizon.