BRUSSELS - The Italian company SPEA Ingegneria Europea received EUR 394.000 from the PHARE CBC (cross border cooperation) program to investigate and develop alternatives for the construction of the "Struma" highway outside the Kresna gorge in Southwestern Bulgaria. As a result, a two-page description and several maps were produced. Completed within a weekend, this "file" is used to argue that it is impossible to find a feasible alternative and the highway must go through Kresna gorge, thus destroying the landscape, killing plants and rare species (some of the most unique in the world) and doing irreversible damage to this outstanding natural value in Bulgaria.

For five years a group of Bulgarian environmental NGOs has been running a campaign to save Kresna gorge. The site is ranked 7th out of 141 CORINE sites identified in Bulgaria in importance. With its high biodiversity value it is expected that the gorge will became a part of NATURA 2000. The Kresna gorge is also designated as an Important Bird Area. Yet the Bulgarian government is pushing for building part of the N4 TENs corridor through the gorge. "It is a purely political decision," says Petko Kovachev from CEIE, Bulgaria. "Even the European Court of Auditors in its special report no. 5/99 found that developing a bigger road in that area is unnecessary due to low traffic, much less a highway."

Several representatives of the Bulgarian NGOs that are running the campaign to save Kresna gorge have come to Brussels for Green Week in their attempt to save the gorge. They will meet with Commission officials and members of the European Parliament to present the problems involved with the project and to ask a simple question: Is the purpose of EU pre-accession money to destroy the nature of their country or to promote sustainable development?

Since the beginning of the project in 1997, Bulgarian environmental NGOs, supported by international NGOs, have demanded that alternatives outside the Kresna CORINE site be developed. The Bulgarian Ministry of Environment also officially stated that it is "obligatory to develop alternatives outside the gorge" in its letter of March 1999.

The European Commission was informed in the beginning of 1999 that the construction of the N4 Trans European Corridor would seriously endanger a highly valuable biodiversity site. In 2000, the Italian Company SPEA was contracted for the highway design as part of a PHARE CBC program-financed project. The Terms of Reference for the project demanded the design of a route which would follow the existing route. Therefore, in November 2000, the Italian company came up with the design of two motorway alignments through the gorge. As a result of an NGO appeal to the European Parliament and European Commission, an additional EUR 394.000 was provided specifically for the development of alternatives. "Unfortunately, EU money was wasted once again and a solution for the protection of Kresna gorge was not reached," says Stoyan Beshkov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. "The Bulgarian government is pushing the option through the gorge which will result in violation of the Bern Convention as well as the Habitat and Bird Directives, and destroy many rare species, some of them local endemic, not found anywhere else in the world."

"If an EU funded project (which should comply with European standards for environmental protection) does not provide the chance to save such valuable territory, we must be concerned for the future of our valuable natural sites at the time of accession. We are here in Brussels during Green Week to appeal to the European Commission for special attention to this particular case," added Anelia Stefanova, representative of the campaign to save Kresna gorge.

"Kresna is one of the many examples from CEE countries where infrastructure development is given priority at a high cost to nature," says Magda Stoczkiewicz, pre-accession funds project coordinator of CEE Bankwatch Network and Friends of the Earth Europe. "As long as nature will not be seriously regarded as a value in money terms as well, we will continue to see disastrous projects."

NGOs will ask the Commission to have a closer look at the project and scrutinize how the money for development of the alternatives was used. They will also ask for a serious assessment of the potential damage to biodiversity if the highway is built through the gorge.