EC Report Asks for Substantial Progress on Corridors 8 and 10, While the State Set Aside 6.334 Billion Denars for 2026

Skopje – One word from Brussels returns: “substantial”. The European Commission in its 2026 report asks for “substantial progress” on key transport infrastructure, including road Corridors VIII and X. The request is among the recommendations in the section on the ability to cope with competitive pressure in the EU market, where the country is “moderately prepared”, with “some progress”.

The state has a programme with a concrete amount for 2026. The programme for financing road infrastructure for the Corridor 8 and Corridor 10d project, adopted at a government session on December 26, 2025, provides 6,334,000,000 denars. At 61.5 denars per euro, that is about 103 million euros. The money comes from the 2026 budget, from the Ministry of Transport programme.

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The programme covers four sections: Tetovo–Gostivar, Gostivar–Bukojcani, Trebenista–Struga–Kafasan and Prilep–Bitola. The first two are on Corridor 8 in western Macedonia, the third connects Lake Ohrid with the border with Albania, and the fourth connects Prilep and Bitola.

The money is not only for asphalt. The document lists four groups of costs: support from foreign contractors and specialist assistance, project documentation and relocation of utilities, construction with geomechanical and geodetic works, and expropriation, including agreements with owners, expropriation decisions, reclassification of forests and land, and court costs.

In everyday terms, 6.334 billion denars a year is about 528 million denars a month, or about 8.6 million euros. Per day that is about 17.4 million denars, or about 282,000 euros, by the editorial calculation. If divided equally among the four sections, which the programme does not do, that would be about 26 million euros per section, but that is only arithmetic, not a plan.

The programme does not split the money by section or by type of cost, so it cannot be said how much of the amount is for construction and how much for expropriation. It is an annual financing plan, not a report on what was spent, so it is not known how much had been used by November.

In the chapter on trans-European networks the Commission also notes the signing of an agreement with Bulgaria to build a rail connection along the WBEM corridor. Road and rail connectivity are part of the rating on competitive pressure, together with the recommendations on higher education and the climate law.

That means the corridors are measured as an economic condition, not only as a construction project. The request is for progress on the corridors, not for new projects. The measure of progress is not the amount in the budget but the kilometres in use and the deadlines, and the report has no concrete figures for those.

MKNews Hub · Macedonia · November 6, 2026