New NATO corridor to bypass Turkish Straits

Bucharest/Sofia/Athens – Greece, Bulgaria and Romania have formally signed a trilateral Memorandum of Understanding to create the Black Sea – Aegean Corridor Platform (BACP), a strategic multimodal north-south transport axis explicitly designed to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank while improving regional connectivity.

The corridor is integrated into the EU’s Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and is structured along three main axes:

• Western axis: Athens – Thessaloniki – Sofia – Vidin/Calafat – Craiova – Bucharest
• Central axis: Thessaloniki/Alexandroupoli – Ormenio – Svilengrad – Ruse/Giurgiu – Bucharest – Siret (Ukraine border) – Ungheni (Republic of Moldova border)
• Eastern axis: Alexandroupoli – Burgas/Varna – Constanța

The infrastructure package includes roads, railways, inland waterways, ports, airports, bridges, and multimodal terminals across the core, extended and comprehensive TEN-T networks.

European Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism Apostolos Tzitzikostas stated:
“Greece, Bulgaria and Romania are taking a decisive step to strengthen the most strategic north-south corridor in Southeast Europe. This will enhance connectivity for citizens and businesses while boosting Europe’s security, competitiveness and resilience in the Aegean, Black Sea and Danube regions. The European Commission will support them every step of the way.”

Although presented as a civilian connectivity and trade project, diplomatic and military sources confirm the corridor’s primary strategic purpose is to guarantee rapid, uninterrupted military mobility between two key NATO hubs: the port and U.S./NATO base at Alexandroupoli (Greece) and the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base near Constanța (Romania). The route allows Allied forces and equipment to bypass the congested and geopolitically sensitive Bosphorus Strait controlled by Turkey.

The initiative has been repeatedly prioritised in meetings with U.S. and NATO officials since 2022.

Funding will combine national budgets and EU instruments (CEF, Cohesion Funds, Recovery and Resilience Facility), with completion of the core network targeted for 2030 and full network by 2040–2050