(by Paola Del Vecchio) (ANSAmed) - MADRID, AUGUST 5 - The great project of the tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar, which will connect Morocco and Spain, will be presented by the two countries to the European Union on October 13. The announcement was made by Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, at the end of a meeting held yesterday in Tangier with his Moroccan counterpart, Tayeb Fasi Fihri. The project presentation, the media reported today, will take place during a Morocco-EU meeting, scheduled to take place in Luxembourg. Moratinos said that this was ''a very ambitious project which will allow to unite Africa and Europe through two solid links on the two continents, Morocco and Spain''. The direct railway link through the tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar is an old project of historical proportions, whose first studies started with an agreement signed by King Hassan II and King Juan Carlos of Spain in 1978, but which only now has received the needed impulse for its execution. In March 2007, Spanish Prime Minister Jose' Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Moroccan Prime Minister Driss Jettou confirmed the willingness of the two countries to begin the construction of the 40 km-long underwater tunnel, indicated in the feasibility study under a technical and economical point of view, to be built by the two specially set up companies, Spanish Seceg and Moroccan Sned. ''It will represent for the XXI century what the Suez Channel represented for the XIX century and the Panama Channel for the XX century'', the Infrastructure Minister at the time, Francisco Alvarez Cascos, had said while signing, in December 2003, the agreements with the Moroccan government to study the feasibility of the project. This is a work of impressive proportions: 40 km of double tunnel, which will require at least 15 years work. The underwater itinerary through the Strait runs from Cape Malabata, near Tangier, to Punta Paloma, in Tarifa, at some 30 km from Gibraltar, at a depth of between 300 m and 600 m. The economical estimates speak of 5.0 billion euro, even if nobody is able to define the final cost of the work, because of the construction difficulties. As Giovanni Lombardi, the Swiss specialist in tunnels, to who Morocco and Spain entrusted the exploration of the technical solutions to be tackled, explained, the work presents more difficulties from a geological point of view than the tunnel under the English Channel, apart from being much deeper. The work will be dedicated exclusively to railway mobility, but the unknown technical factors are many. It is enough to mention that in the Strait's sea bed the water pressure is very strong, some 500 tonnes per cu m, a fact which requires the arrangement of an adequate pumping installation. On top of this, there are geological problems, because it is a seismic area: in 1755 an earthquake devastated this region south of the Iberian peninsula. If the geological studies, the preparation of the funds and the problem of the strong sea currents in the Strait are solved in time, the construction works might start by the end of 2008, and, according to the most optimistic forecasts, the first railway carriages might pass under the Strait by 2025. As soon as the project is approved by the EU, it is expected to be funded by the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and the African Development Fund, along with several Arab investment funds.