A FREEWAY connecting Bratislava and Austria will open to traffic on November 15 this year, announced Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico at a joint news conference on February 18.
Gusenbauer was in Slovakia for talks with Fico.
The Austrian chancellor also said his government accepts the decision of the Slovak government not to privatize Bratislava airport or the Cargo Slovakia railway company, and added that Austria is prepared to create the political conditions for future cooperation between the Vienna and Bratislava airports as well as in railway cargo transport.
Gusenbauer invited Fico to visit Austria officially in the spring of this year. Fico in turn asked for Austria's support for Slovakia's introduction of the euro in 2009, as well as for the country's efforts to enter the Schengen area, the EU's border-free zone, as of the end of 2007.
As far as the free movement of labour is concerned, Gusenbauer confirmed that Austria plans to use the maximum seven-year delay to block access to its labour market for workers from Slovakia and other new EU members that joined in 2004. It will reassess its decision in 2009, the SITA news agency wrote.
