A new segment of the Moldavia Motorway, opened

Road traffic was opened on Thursday on segment 3 of the Moldavia Motorway which, when completed, will connect southern Romania to the country's northern border with Ukraine.

Sorin Iordan, 28.11.2025, 13:50

Transport infrastructure is among the critical elements of European defense plans, in the current tense security context caused by the aggressive Russian Federation. The network of national roads, expressways and motorways has been, over time, a major vulnerability of Romania, which for more than three decades has been struggling to reduce the gap with central and western Europe. Although in 2023, Romania exceeded the threshold of 1,000 kilometers of motorways and expressways put into use, a year later the country was in penultimate place in the European Union in terms of motorway density, according to Eurostat. Under these circumstances, in 2016, the government in Bucharest adopted the General Transport Master Plan that establishes the main directions for the development of transport infrastructure in Romania until 2030. One of its objectives is to connect the historical provinces of Romania – Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania – with modern road and railway networks.

Part of this initiative is the A7 Motorway, known as the Moldavia Motorway or the Union Motorway. With a planned length of about 450 kilometers, the Moldovia Motorway will connect southern Romania to the northern border with Ukraine. On Thursday, a new section of it was put into use. This is a 13 km segment that connects the Pietroasele locality to the city of Buzău and allows travel, on the motorway, from Bucharest to Focşani, on a distance of approximately 210 kilometers.

Government representatives and parliamentarians were present at the opening of traffic on this segment. The General Director of the National Road Infrastructure Management Company, Cristian Pistol, emphasized that this is the first time that two historical regions of Romania have been successfully connected with a motorway. The former Minister of Transport, the current speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Sorin Grindeanu, said that the construction works were completed faster than stipulated in the contract and that, with this inauguration, the city of Buzău can become an extremely important logistics hub. In his turn, the Minister of Transport, Ciprian Şerban, announced that, if weather conditions allow it, an attempt will be made to open another 49 km, between Focşani and Adjud, by the end of this year. At the same time, the authorities promise that 330 kilometers of the Moldavia Motorway will be available to drivers next year.

With about 8 km of motorway per 100,000 inhabitants, Romania is slowly catching up with the gap in road infrastructure compared to Poland and the Czech Republic, which have about 15 km per hundred thousand inhabitants. In 2026, over 850 km of high-speed roads in Romania will be under construction. By the time they are completed, approximately 1,400 km of motorway and expressway will be accessible. (EE)