The solemn ceremony was held with the participation of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, numerous representatives of railways, international financial institutions, construction organisations, as well as international organisations, including the OSJD Committee.

Speaking at the ceremony, the President of Ukraine said that the Beskid Tunnel in the Carpathians has been the country's largest infrastructure facility for the past few decades. Thanks to this tunnel, a significant increase in the volume of railway traffic is expected in the direction of the European Union, where the transport of goods is increased by 20% by the Ukrainian Railway annually.

Addressing the participants next, the Head of the “Ukrzaliznytsya” PJSC Yevgeny Kravtsov said:

“You all understand well what such symbolic things as a tunnel mean for the country. For us, this is an important infrastructure project that shows that Ukrzaliznytsia can go forward, that it can move the economy and the state to a brighter future.”

The length of the tunnel is 1764.5 m, the speed of trains - up to 60 km/h. It has 12 large chambers, 49 niches and is equipped with video monitoring system. The guarantee of the tunnel operation is 100 years. It is expected that with the opening of the tunnel, the capacity of this transport corridor (which is a section of the OSJD railway transport corridor No. 5), through which 60% of the export cargoes pass in the direction of the EU, will increase to 100 pairs of trains per day, which will contribute to the development of the economy and tourism in this region and in the country as a whole. The new tunnel replaced the old one built as far back as under the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1889, which already had a low capacity and was in a pour technical condition.

The construction, which lasted 4 years, was implemented with the financial support of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as, since 2014, with the support of the European Investment Bank. The “Ukrzaliznytsya” PJSC performed the laying of tracks and other communication and service lines at its own expenses and already started to repay the loan, the entire amount of which is to be paid by 2022.

The design works for the Tunnel were carried out by the employees of the “Ukrspetstonnelproject” institute, and subcontracting works for building the tunnel were performed by the “Interbudmontazh” company. The functions of an outside observer were assigned to the Austrian company “D2Consult”, which provided its consulting engi­neers. According to the Head of the “D2Consult”, Andreas Bail, the Beskid Tunnel project is unique for Ukraine from the engineering point of view. It was built with the use of the New Austrian Tunneling Method, better known by the abbreviation NATM (New Austrian Tunneling Method). This method assumes maximum use of the load-carrying capacity of rocks and prevents water from penetrating into the tunnel.