As early as in 1909[7] the local authorities in Vidin (in Bulgaria) had first expressed their interest in building a bridge to Calafat (in Romania), by sending a petition to the Bulgarian parliament and to Aleksandar Malinov, who was prime minister at that time.

Dry summers come with low water levels in the Danube river, which sometimes caused the ferry to get stuck at the loading ramp, making waiting times even longer.

[11] Another factor that would make ferry traffic impossible or difficult were the very cold winters, when the Danube river sometimes freezes completely.

Travellers from Bulgaria (and Turkey) towards Central and Western Europe who wanted to avoid both the long waiting times and high transfer prices for the Calafat-Vidin ferry crossing and the customs procedures and road tolls one would face when travelling through Serbia, which is outside the European Union border, had to make a long detour towards the Giurgiu–Ruse Bridge.

[14] This detour to Ruse often took longer than waiting for a ferry in Vidin or Oryahovo, however, both ways of crossing the border can take a long time.

This is because here the Danube has a very large mirrored S-shape, spanning across approximately 90 kilometres (56 mi), starting at Novo Selo and ending in Lom.

However, the city of Vidin is lying lower and is protected by dikes, while the bank on the Calafat side is high above Danube river.

A research under the European PHARE programme found that the most profitable place for the bridge would have been between Lom and Rast, but neither country agreed with this.

[15] Romania wanted transiting trucks to stay in their country as long as possible by placing the bridge further east, between Turnu Măgurele and Nikopol.

[16] The final agreement was that the second Danube bridge was to be built between Vidin and Calafat, but Romania refused to invest in other than the adjacent infrastructure on their territory.

[17] In 1999, a stability pact for South East Europe was signed by banks and national governments, aiming to bring investments to countries like Bulgaria and Romania.

Chairman of this stability pact was Bodo Hombach, who had set up a great lobby in favor of the new bridge between Vidin and Calafat.

[18][19] Thanks to the lobby of Bodo Hombach, the European Investment Bank granted the project a credit loan of €50 million in December 2000.

[22] Construction officially began on 13 May 2007 in Vidin in the presence of Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev and Special Coordinator of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe Erhard Busek.

[28] Since these parcels were sold out to different people, the Bulgarian minister of transport had to wait for a law that made it possible to expropriate the new landowners.

[30][31] Taking a closer look on the Bulgarian side, one could notice some preparation of the track leading towards the future bridge, with a small office being built.

Due to the failure to meet the original deadline, Bulgaria almost lost the financing of the whole project,[32] but they were granted more time to finish the bridge by the end of 2012.

The idea was to have these segments ready long before they were needed, so that the assembly of the superstructure of the bridge could not be delayed because of possible quality problems with the concrete.

In February 2012, the Bulgarian Minister of European Union Funds Management Tomislav Donchev said that he expected the bridge to be finished by the end of 2012.

[36] On 24 October 2012, the two countries' Prime Ministers, joined by the European Union Regional Policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn, met halfway on the bridge, after the two shores of the Danube were finally connected during the preceding week.

[citation needed] On 22 May 2013, the Bulgarian president announced that the opening ceremony of the Danube Bridge 2 was set to take place on 14 June 2013, and that the toll for passenger cars would be six euro.

The two countries were initially set to become part of the Schengen Area by the time the bridge would open, and no border police cabins had been ordered until the very last moment.

At the point where the railway meets the road, a gap in the median crash barrier has been adapted to serve as a U-turn lane.

It is also part of the European route E79, that runs from Miskolc (Hungary) to Thessaloniki (Greece), via the Romanian cities of Beiuş, Deva, Petroşani, Târgu Jiu and Craiova.

[48] According to the planned road network of Pan-European corridors, the bridge was supposed to have access to the Bucharest – Craiova – Timișoara – Budapest motorway by 2017, allowing rapid transit from North-western Bulgaria, to South-western Romania, Eastern Hungary and the rest of Europe.

[60] The Romanian PM Victor Ponta made a statement after the inauguration of the bridge that Romania plans to build a motorway between Craiova and Calafat.

However, another video recorded in October 2014 shows that it is no longer possible to sneak through that parking lot and drive back over the bridge to Bulgaria for free.