Saxon newspaper June 30, 2020:
Three-country bridge on the brink of collapse?
Poles and Czechs have already withdrawn. Now Zittau no longer wants the current draft either.
By Thomas Mielke
The eternal “Three-Country Bridge” project will probably not be implemented for a long time: after Poland and the Czechs announced that they no longer wanted to build the current design, Zittau is also moving towards this line. As Mayor Thomas Zenker (Zkm) confirmed when asked by SZ, he will communicate this to his partners in neighboring countries. “But we are sticking to the basic idea of a fine bridge,” he said. The idea for the bridge at the three-country point over the Neisse was born in 2004. Due, among other things, to the difficulty of reconciling the water and building laws of the three countries, the twin towns of Bogatynia, Hradek and Zittau had to repeatedly postpone construction. Over the past 16 years, there have been several designs that have been increasingly larger and more expensive than their predecessors. In February, the Czechs and Poles cited the cost and size of the current draft as justification for the change of course. “The last version I saw was supposed to cost 4.8 million euros,” said Cezary Przybylski, Marshal of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. This is almost five times more expensive than originally planned. Martin Puta, captain of the Liberec district, doubts that the population will even like such an impressive work in the landscape of the border triangle.