Bulgaria, Greece open sixth border crossing

Bulgaria and Greece on Sunday opened a sixth crossing along their 493-km border between the two Balkan neighbors. The new border crossing Makaza-Nymphea, located some 300 kilometers southeast of the the Bulgarian capital Sofia, is a part of the pan-European transport corridor IX, linking the Finnish capital Helsinki with the Greek port of Alexandroupolis via St. Petersburg, Kiev, Bucharest and Dimitrovgrad. Bisser Nikolov, governor of Bulgaria's Kardzhali province, said at the opening ceremony that the road through Makaza had been a decade-long dream for Bulgarian citizens, which would give a boost to tourism, trade and the economy in both countries. The crossing would also see a large amount of cross-border traffic, according to Boyko Bozhkov, head of the regional border police in Smolyan. More than 65,000 vehicles and 250,000 people passed the Bulgarian-Greek border last weekend, Bozhkov said.