Border construction

Border construction project is one of the largest Estonian security-related construction projects of all time, and is undertaken to ensure that Estonia is a safe place to live.

For the PBGB, the border construction programme is the largest and highest priority development project and a corresponding project team is involved in preparing and carrying out the project. The finest domestic and international experts are involved, and the experience of other European countries in ensuring border security has been taken into account.

Objective

The eastern border is 338 kilometres long and 135 km of it is located in hard to access and forested terrain, which does not however prevent People from attempting to illegally cross the border. But it does make it harder for border guards to respond efficiently to border incidents. Although the border strip has been cleared of major brush and Estonian border posts are in place, there are still enough kilometres of the external border that every metre cannot be guarded by human eyes and modern technical support is required.

Development activities along the control line between Estonia and Russia – the eastern border – include not only construction works, but installation of modern monitoring and surveillance systems along the entire external border. In future, this will provide better possibilities to prevent illegal border crossing and migration, curtailing human trafficking and halting cross-border smuggling. The information collected by the surveillance systems will allow real-time response to every incident. Among other things, the information can be used as evidence and in the case of illegal or inadvertent border crossings, smuggling, human trafficking or other cross-border crimes.

Added value

Besides security, border construction will also increase quality of life for local residents as locals and visitors can use the access roads established in areas along the border. As electricity connection points and substations will be constructed along the border and some power lines will be introduced to areas where they were previously completely lacking, this will give locals the possibility to improve their electricity supply. In addition, renovated facilities at Lake Vaniku will provide recreational possibilities for locals and visitors.

The construction activity along the eastern border on the control line between Estonia and Russia can be classified into three major segments:

River Narva development activities (76.7 km)
Peipus lake system development activities (126.3 km)
Land border development activities (135.6 km)

Following the completion of test segments, design work, geological and geodesic investigations, it was revealed in 2018 that building the land border in the planned volume would cost an estimated 190 million euros. The precise price of construction of each of the land border segments will be determined ultimately as a result of specific construction procurements.

Border construction