The Polish government is planning a new central airport to be built with an annual capacity of 34 million passengers and with an opening date in 2032, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced in Warsaw on Wednesday.
The new airport at Baranów 60 kilometres west of Warsaw is expected to cost an estimated €30 million ($32 million). Polish flag carrier LOT is also to be expanded.
Construction of the CPK central transport hub was among the controversial prestige projects of the previous conservative nationalist government, which ran the country from 2015 until last year.
While Tusk's liberal-conservative coalition, which has been in power since December, is adopting the construction plans, the project would be modified considerably to meet the country's needs, Tusk said.
"Someone has to build it after all, but it has to be based on realistic assumptions," he said.
The original plans of the Law and Justice (PiS) party envisaged that the airport would not only replace Warsaw's current airport, but also serve as a hub for Central and Eastern Europe.
PiS former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki spoke of 100 million passengers annually, while others said the project was unrealistic. By comparison, Germany's largest hub at Frankfurt handled 59.4 million passengers last year.
Tusk said that Poland needed a modern airport, but that he wished to delink the project from "political propaganda and ideology."
Plans for a new central railway station in Baranów with connections to the rest of the country had been abandoned, while work was proceeding to expand existing tracks for high-speed trains between the country's cities, Tusk said.
Turning to LOT, Tusk said the airline would "not be as big as Lufthansa, but of similar size." Its fleet is to grow from 76 currently to 135 planes by 2032.
