The bridge over the Danube, the unexpected rescue of the city of Calafat. The mega-investment from the forgotten port

Calafat is proud of one of the biggest investments in infrastructure in Romania for the last decades, the bridge over the Danube “New Europe”. The city failed to take advantage of this opportunity. The old Danube port offers the dramatic image of a declining city, with buildings in comparison.

The bridge over the Danube from Calafat. Photo: Daniel Guță. TRUTH

Over 225 million euros were invested in the “New Europe” bridge, built over the Danube to connect, road and rail, the cities of Calafat and Vidin.

The spectacular bridge over the Danube

The bridge, with a length of over two kilometers, whose construction began in 2007, was inaugurated in the summer of 2013 and became one of the most important links between Romania and Bulgaria, but also between the European Union and the Balkan Peninsula.

“The Vidin-Calafat Bridge, also known as the new Europe, is the second bridge over the Danube river between Bulgaria and Romania and was built with common funding from the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, the French Development Agency and KFW”, shows the administrators of the bridge.

Over 11 million cars have traversed it so far, in the 12 years since the opening. The number ten million car passed on this bridge in 2023.

“On November 13, 2023, the bridge over the Danube Vidin-Calafat welcomed the tenth million vehicle. The lucky driver was Stanislav Kozhuharov from Dimitrovgrad, who passed by car over the bridge. This event emphasizes the importance of the bridge as an essential connection between Bulgaria and Romania” transmitted the objective representatives.

The bridge over the Danube was the most important investment in the recent history of Calafat (Dolj county). The project has generated almost 1,000 jobs in Calafat and Vidin, according to the builders, and was to attract other tens of millions of euros in the local infrastructure in Calafat and in the port of the right bank of the Danube.

Image 1/27:
Bridge over the Danube Vidin Calafat Photo Daniel Guță Adevărul (3) JPG

From 2025, with the accession of Romania to the Schengen area, the importance of the Calafat -Vidin bridge has increased considerably. The columns of trucks that started from Calafat Vama were disappeared and stretched for miles, to the villages neighboring the city, towards Drobeta Turnu Severin and Craiova.

The bridge has also become the most accessible transport route between the states of Western Europe and south-east Europe, and the cities of Vidin and Calafat have become landmarks on the IV Pan-European transport corridor.

The lack of highways on both banks of the Danube and the weak railway infrastructure of the area have limited the economic impact that the bridge can have. But even so, the bridge represented an unexpected opportunity for the city – port.

The decline of the port city

The bridge over the Danube gave an impulse to the local economy, but the city failed to take full advantage.

In the last decade, the population of Calafat has reduced by over 20 percent, reaching from 17,500 inhabitants in 2011 to less than 13,800 at present. In the early 1990s, the city had about 20,000 inhabitants, and almost half of the locals worked in the factories on its industrial platform.

“We worked at the Calafat canning factory, which had over 3,000 employees in the 1980s. The factory closed in 1995, and we finally moved to Galicea Mare, not far from the city, and we continued to cultivate vegetables and melons. Investment of 1.5 million euros, of which 90 percent are European funds, and we will open it soon. tells a local.

Calafat's factories in bankruptcy after 1990

In Calafat, the local industry had reached the maximum expansion in the 1980s, the locals remember, when several factories operated on the outskirts. The industrial platform of Calafat included in the 1980s the sugar beet industrialization plant, the “biosin” biosyntal factory, the starch and glucose factory and a power plant. Biosin, the largest of the factories, was built between 1980 and 1985 and was announced by the communist authorities as the first organic insecticide factory in Romania.

Image 1/20:
Calafat Calafat Photo Daniel Guță Adevărul (3) JPG

“In the war with the pests, the technology of producing a biopreparat called Thuringin, manufactured at the Calafat Biosyntal company, is specialized in combating the hairy omitus – a polyphagous species, which is not limited to the dud, but attack any fruit tree and even the vine, in the present, intense. Finding a solution to prevent and combat rhizomania – a serious condition that threatens sugar beet culture ”informing, in 1985, Flacăra magazine.

The plant, with about 2,000 employees in the late 80's, worked less than five years, with many problems, coming to collapse since 1990, with the market liberalization. When its products were no longer sought, and the raw materials for their achievement began to be missing, the employees came to work for nothing, some locals remember.

In the coming years, it was privatized, and was shortly decommissioned and sold for scrap iron. On the other side of the city, the Calafat canned factory had reached among the largest in the south of Romania, and in its vicin, a textile factory provides over 1,000 jobs. The canning factory was closed in 1995, together with other smaller factories, with which a few years ago the locals were proud.

Historical buildings in Calafat, in ruin

Some rows of low comfort blocks, raised in the decades of communism in Calafat, give it the appearance of a working city, but in reality, only a small part of its history has been related to the industry.

In the center of the city, close to the wide cliff, but more and more deserted, on the Danube, several mansions and hotels, built at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, remind of the former brilliance of Calafat. The Marincu Palace, erected in 1908 by Gheorghe Marincu, is one of the most elegant buildings in the city.

Currently, he hosts the Museum of Art and Ethnography in Calafat. Other historical buildings had a sadder fate. The former Carol Hotel, erected around 1900, reached the ruin, and the Royal Station in Calafat, although impressed with its architecture, remained almost deserted.

The “Saint Nicholas” Cathedral, two centuries-old, is affected by degradation, like most emblematic buildings in the port city. In Calafat there are several monuments and commemorative statues, the most important being the one dedicated to the soldiers fallen in the war of independence of 1877. Next to the old buildings, they also remember the importance of the city.