4 Million Euros Pumped into Strengthening Zagreb Airport Military Mobility

January the 16th, 2023 - Zagreb Airport military mobility is set to be strengthened with a generous four million euro cash injection from European Union (EU) funds.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the European Union recently approved more than four million euros from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) fund for military mobility to finance the reconstruction of maneuvering areas to improve the civil-military operability of Zagreb's Franjo Tudjman International Airport.

As announced by the Ministry of Defence, Zagreb Airport military mobility is going to be boosted after the airport submitted its project to an EU tender. One of the conditions for obtaining the aforementioned funds was the support of the Ministry of Defense in the form of an explanation of the usefulness of the project for the Croatian Armed Forces.

The Zagreb Airport military mobility project includes the reconstruction of parts of the driving track, the replacement of various pieces of electronic equipment and installations, and the replacement of part of the vertical signaling on the maneuvering surfaces. Defense Minister Mario Banozic also pointed out that the goal of the project, among other things, is to strengthen interdepartmental cooperation in the context of the construction of civil-military transport infrastructure.

"The approval of financing from EU funds confirmed the value of this project, as well as the importance of cooperation between military and civilian institutions. I believe that we will continue on this path and with this same level of intensity," said Banozic.

The call for improving overall Zagreb Airport military mobility under the CEF instrument was announced back in May 2022, and in the sense of the wider military mobility project at hand, 63 applications from all over the EU worth more than 1.5 billion euros were received, of which 35 were approved, totalling a whopping 616 million euros.

Back in 2022, the Ministry of Defense, in cooperation with other competent central bodies of the state administration, adopted the Military Mobility Plan, where one of the goals was to strengthen interdepartmental cooperation and prepare projects for possible co-financing from the EU financial envelope for military mobility for the construction of civil-military transport infrastructure.