Poland starts work on highway to Helsinki

Work began on Thursday on a controversial highway bypass around Augustow in north-east Poland, a project that has caused concern in the European Commission and aroused the ire of environmentalists because the road is to run through an ecologically sensitive bog.

The bypass through the Rospuda valley was approved by Jan Szyszko, Polish environment minister, who said on Thursday in a radio interview he was not worried about Poland being fined by the European Commission.

"I don't expect that any fines will be levied on a country which is undertaking everything in accordance with the law," he said.

Earlier this week, Stavros Dimas, the EU's environment commissioner, asked the Polish government to delay the project and warned that the Commission could turn to the European Court of Justice if Poland refuses to listen. The planned 17-km bypass runs through territory protected under the EU's Natura 2000 programme.

The road is part of the Via Baltica project, designed to link Warsaw and Helsinki with a modern express motorway running through the Baltic countries. The current two-lane road is narrow and dangerous, often running directly through towns and villages and clogged with transport trucks. The new motorway has been in the works since 1992.

Several hundred demonstrators from environmental organisations are staging a protest in the forested valley. They argue there is an alternative route which runs through less ecologically sensitive areas.

But several thousand people from Augustow held their own rally earlier this week, demanding the swift construction of the highway which would shift traffic from the centre of town. Town officials have warned that if the project is cancelled, they will blockade the road through Augustow and will appeal to the EU to shut the main border point between Poland and Lithuania to divert traffic elsewhere.

The Polish government is divided on the issue. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the prime minister, said his government is open to talks with the EU on the issue, but worried that if protests over the Rospuda derailed the project, the precedent could disrupt ambitious plans to build a modern network of highways in Poland. Meanwhile, his twin brother, Lech Kaczynski, Poland's president, has expressed his disapproval over the project.

Poland's new Central Anti-Corruption Bureau yesterday began investigating General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways, the government department responsible for road construction, to see if the bid for the Augustow bypass was correctly carried out.

Source:By Jan Cienski in Warsaw,