Early Development Other

DELAYED +6mo (Apr 2026): ESPIRE indicators originally targeted June‑2028 for BSSC technical, environmental and social documentation. The Mar‑2025 ISR confirms Phase 1 activities had not begun and schedules seabed investigations and permits across several years, while a Jan‑2026 Argus interview indicates marine studies and ESIA in 2027–28. With this later sequencing, completing full documentation by mid‑2028 is optimistic; end‑2028 is more realistic. --- World Bank results indicators for the ESPIRE program envisage that by around June 2028 the technical, environmental, and social documentation for the Black Sea Submarine Cable Project and its overhead line connections in Georgia and Romania will be fully completed. This includes the ESIA, resettlement frameworks and plans, and other environmental and social instruments that build on the earlier feasibility‑stage work, which at the time of reporting left environmental and social documentation still to be developed and seabed surveys yet to begin.