Turkish contractor completes key section of European tunnel

LJUBLJANA

The Karavanke Tunnel, a strategic Alpine crossing linking the Mediterranean, the Balkans and Central Europe, has opened to traffic, with Turkish contractor Cengiz İnşaat completing the Slovenian section of the project.

The 7,946-meter tunnel, regarded as a key north-south trade route in Europe, was completed in six years. Cengiz İnşaat built the 3,446-meter section on Slovenian territory.

The project is designed to remove a long-standing bottleneck on the route and improve both traffic flow and safety on the corridor linking Slovenia with Austria. The tunnel is also part of the trans-European transport network, giving it broader significance for regional freight and passenger traffic.

The project was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by officials from the European Commission and the governments of Slovenia and Austria.

Speaking at the ceremony, Slovenian Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek said the tunnel was more than an infrastructure project and thanked Türkiye’s ambassador to Ljubljana, Hayriye Kumaşcıoğlu and Cengiz İnşaat for their contribution.

“Without their efforts, we would not have been able to open this tunnel,” she said, adding that the renovation of the other tube would now begin and that traffic flow in the region would ease once both tubes are fully operational.

Kumaşcıoğlu said Cengiz had carried out the project successfully, completed it on time and met high standards.

She said the project had helped showcase the capacity and performance of Türkiye’s contracting sector and would serve as a strong reference for future projects in the country.

Cengiz İnşaat Vice Chair Asım Cengiz said Turkish contractors had continued to demonstrate their quality in projects across different countries.

The project cost 140 million euros and employed 300 people, including 255 Turkish workers. Around 700,000 cubic meters of excavation material were removed during construction in the Alps.