Economy 18 February 2025, 8:10am

János Lázár takes a hard line against Strabag, threatening to ban the company from Hungary

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A public forum on the problems of the M30 motorway between Miskolc and Szikszó was held in Szikszó with the participation of János Lázár. Hungary's Minister of Construction and Transport said on the spot that the contractor, Strabag, had already been contacted to fix a technical fault under warranty. He also said that Strabag could be banned from the country if the repairs did not go as expected, Index reported late on Monday.

In 2021, the 57-kilometre section of the M30 motorway above Miskolc, leading to Košice and the Slovakian border, was opened. However, a section of the motorway between Miskolc and Szikszó had to be closed at the end of February 2024, 2.5 years after it was opened, because the road had slipped over a 150-metre stretch. Since then, only detours have been allowed on this section.

The patience of local residents has run out as they have received no satisfactory answers about the causes of the problem, who is responsible and how long it will take to repair. So the local chapter of the NGO aHang convened a forum to confront János Lázár with a document that they claim contradicts the minister's previous statements.

The event was also attended by the CEO of the Hungarian Public Road Nonprofit Ltd, representatives of the Hungarian Concession Infrastructure Development Ltd, an independent architectural expert and several executives from the Ministry of Construction and Transport.

Dániel Papp, an independent expert, said the problems were caused by the bearing capacity of the subsoil and drainage problems in a 350-metre section. József Pántya, deputy state secretary at the Ministry of Transport and Public Works, said that there had been problems since the handover, which the contractor had tried to fix, but the road manager had finally declared the section unfit for traffic.

János Lázár stressed that the fault was clearly the responsibility of the contractor. Experts from the Department of Geotechnical Engineering of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) were also involved in the investigation, which showed that the problem was more serious than expected. The repair is expected to take 10-11 months, which the contractor will have to carry out as part of its warranty obligations.

We were not going to be cheated by the contractor. We went to Strabag with an independent expert's report saying that there was a technical fault and that they would fix it under warranty,

said Lázár.

The minister also threatened to ban Strabag from Hungary if the reconstruction did not go according to plan.

According to a statement by Strabag on social media, the work must be completed by 31 October.

Regarding the compensation for the annual motorway toll, János Lázár promised that ÉKM would look into the matter and calculate the compensation.

Index contacted both Strabag and BME about the case, but both parties refused to give concrete answers, citing confidentiality obligations. Strabag said it had started preparing the reinforcement of the unstable soil structure, while BME stressed that it had only carried out an expert investigation and that Ministry of Construction and Transport was entitled to comment on the matter.

Cover photo: MTI Photo/János Vajda