As a part of the "Open Border" project, today, with the participation of the team of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine and representatives of the Polish Government, traffic was opened through the updated crossing point "Krakivets - Korchova".

The project was launched within the framework of the agreements of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi and the President of Poland Andrzej Duda and was agreed upon at a meeting of Ukrainian-Polish intergovernmental consultations. Work on increasing the throughput at the crossing point started only 10 days ago. In particular, the number of lanes for trucks has been increased from 4 to 10, and additional pavilions for customs and passport control have been created.

In the conditions of blockade of the seaports, powerful logistics on the western borders is an indispensable condition for the Ukrainian economy functioning. That is why the "Open Border" project has been created. This project is designed to significantly increase the throughput capacity of automobile checkpoints and improve logistics on the Ukraine-EU route. It is expected that the renovation of the pilot point "Krakowec - Korchova" will increase its capacity by at least 50%.

Although the first negotiations on the renewal of this border control post began back in 2011 as part of preparations for Euro 2012 with the full support of the Polish side, unfortunately, no active actions regarding the development of the checkpoint took place until last year.

Oleksii Kubrakov commented that Ukraine is grateful to Polish colleagues - the Minister of Infrastructure of Poland Andrzej Adamczyk and the Head of the Office of the Prime Minister Michal Dvorczyk for their support in the implementation of this project and expect to scale up the successful experience at this checkpoint to the other 7 checkpoints on the Ukrainian-Polish border.

Similar projects will be implemented to increase the throughput on the borders with other western neighbors. The negotiations have already been conducted on joining the "Open Border" project by Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova.

The parties also increased the number of border guards and customs officials at the checkpoint. For their work, the Polish side provided special container modules.

The "Open Border" project envisages the elimination of bottlenecks on the western border and improvement of logistics in the Ukraine-EU direction.

In particular, it is planned to:

reconstruct the infrastructure of existing checkpoints (including access roads);

construct the new crossing points;

introduce the joint border and customs control with neighboring states.

The need for the project is caused by the blockade of Ukrainian sea ports and the subsequent sharp increase in the load on land border crossing points. Due to this situation, queues are from 3 to 25 km long at certain sections of the border.

Reference source: The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine