Groundbreaking for Skopje-Blace Highway at Stenkovec
Construction has started on the highway section near Stenkovec leading to the Blace border crossing, a link also important for Serbia's Belgrade to Nis to Pristina to Skopje route.
A foundation stone was laid today near the Stenkovec interchange outside Skopje for a 10.5 kilometer highway section that will run to the Blace border area toward Kosovo. For Serbia, this is more than a regional infrastructure story next door. It marks the last link on the route that, via Merdare and Pristina, connects Belgrade and Nis with Skopje, and it forms part of the wider corridor network financed by Brussels through the Western Balkans Investment Framework (WBIF), the same mechanism that is also funding part of the works on the Serbian side of the border.
The construction deadline is four years. The works are being carried out by a consortium led by the North Macedonian company Granit, with the project financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) through a loan of 167.6 million euros, alongside a WBIF grant of 30.82 million euros. The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport Aleksandar Nikoloski, as well as members of parliament, ambassadors and representatives of the international financial partners involved in the project.
The director of North Macedonia’s Public Enterprise for State Roads, Koce Trajanovski, described the section as the most technically demanding in the country.
“Today we are laying the foundation stone for the most complex and most difficult highway, which over a short stretch of just 10.5 kilometers will include numerous tunnels, viaducts, bridges and galleries in complex hilly and mountainous terrain that will challenge both designers and contractors,” Trajanovski said at the groundbreaking near Stenkovec.
The terrain, part of the Skopska Crna Gora massif, is behind the density of structures planned along the route. The project calls for five tunnels with two tubes each, totaling about five kilometers, as well as four galleries for slope stabilization, totaling about one kilometer, and nine retaining walls. Sources differ on the number of bridges: N1, citing Trajanovski, reports eight, while Balkan Watch puts the figure at nine bridges totaling about 2.5 kilometers. Balkan Watch also reports 11 underpasses planned along the route.
The two outlets also diverge on the width of the roadway itself. According to N1’s report, Trajanovski said the highway’s total designed width would be 27.5 meters, while Balkan Watch, citing Mickoski, puts the width at 27 meters. Both sources agree the highway will have two traffic lanes in each direction, each 3.5 meters wide, plus a 2.5 meter emergency lane.
The Stenkovec to Blace section will connect with the 1.5 kilometers of highway already built near the border crossing itself, completing North Macedonia’s side of the corridor toward Kosovo. Trajanovski said land expropriation had been resolved on more than 65 percent of the route and, in his words, would not hold up contractors the way it had on some earlier projects in the country. He expects the remaining expropriation to be settled within a month or two.
For Belgrade, the project is part of a larger puzzle. The Nis to Merdare section on the Serbian side and the completion of the road through Kosovo to the North Macedonian border are together meant to shorten the route from Belgrade to Thessaloniki and the Greek ports, an alternative to the corridor through Bulgaria that Serbia’s government has been promising for years. Until the four year deadline for the Stenkovec to Blace section turns into an actual opening date, the region is left watching whether coordinated progress on both sides of the border will actually produce a connected highway, rather than one more finished section waiting on its neighboring stretch.
