Rijeka’s rail line is back, Koper passes a million TEU, and the decisions that will move cargo next year are being made in Brussels and Belgrade

On the ground, the week was a story of one line reopening on a patch. The Zagreb–Rijeka line took freight again on the afternoon of 15 October, five days after the derailment at Meja, but switches and signalling still need repair, so I would keep a fallback booking until the operator says the work is finished. Koper reported one million TEU for the year to date, ahead of schedule. I will not call it a record because the source gives no prior-year figure, but the port is plainly carrying volume while it sells the southern route to Bavarian shippers. The weak point is outside the Adriatic: September schedule reliability was 27% worldwide and 4% on Far East–Europe, with 17% or more of October Far East–Europe capacity cancelled. A late vessel at Koper costs a rail slot behind it.

Behind the logistics, the slow part of the region is moving. On 12 and 13 October the EU held accession conferences with Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova. Montenegro now has 21 of its 33 chapters provisionally closed, and Ukraine and Moldova opened two negotiating clusters covering 17 chapters. The Commission’s enlargement package, with accession roadmaps for four of those countries and a proposal for gradual integration, has been pushed back a week to 4 November. Early signs point to transport and energy among the areas for deeper market participation. For a corridor business that matters more than any single tender: customs alignment, rail rules and funding eligibility follow accession, in that order of boring detail.

The risks are political. Serbia’s oil company NIS is still held by Russian shareholders under US sanctions, and Romania has cleared the sale of its Romanian petrol-station arm to Argenta, a step in a restructuring that is separate from the Hungarian MOL talks. Fuel and project cargo in Serbia depend on how that ends. Kosovo’s parliament passed a law that the EU’s enlargement commissioner called unacceptable, which touches the Hague court handling cases involving Kosovo. I found no customs or transit consequence yet, but it is a funding and relationship risk to watch. And in the Black Sea, one outlet reports at least four merchant ships hit off Bulgaria and Romania between 13 and 15 October, with at least 17 seafarers missing. I have only that one source, so verify before quoting it. If it holds, insurers will reprice the Constanța and Danube options.

The common thread is that routing is being decided by accession timetables, sanctions and war risk as much as by track and berth. On the cost side, EU leaders asked the Commission to update its ETS2 impact assessment without postponing it; ETS2 will reach hauliers through diesel prices from 2028. I would write that into any multi-year road contract now.

Note on scope: four logistics items and six context items passed verification this week. I left out anything I could not confirm by reading the source.