The Baltic States must work together to secure European Union funding for the Rail Baltica project in the bloc’s 2028-2034 budget, Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius said on August 20.
“Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania should fight for the 2028-2034 multiannual budget funding for Rail Baltica. The Connecting Europe Facility is the designated tool for this,” Sinkevicius told reporters in Riga.
The Lithuanian PM said the project was moving forward despite construction difficulties and legal disputes involving several contractors.
“Despite what is happening on the ground, I think we see progress; the project is moving forward and is no longer just at the discussion level,” he said.
Several contractors are currently in litigation with LTG Infra, the infrastructure arm of Lithuania’s state-owned railway group. One of them is Italian construction company Rizzani de Eccher, whose contract to build Rail Baltica’s longest bridge in the Baltic states, in Jonava, Lithuania, was terminated after about half the work had been completed.
Lithuanian Transport Minister Juras Taminskas said earlier this week that the project remained under control despite the legal disputes.
The total cost of Rail Baltica is now estimated at 23.8 billion euros, up from an initial 2017 estimate of 5.8 billion euros.
Matiss Paegle, chairman of the supervisory board of RB Rail, the joint venture overseeing the project, has warned that construction delays could jeopardise grants already allocated to Rail Baltica and lead to reduced funding in the EU’s next budget cycle.
Rail Baltica is a planned European-gauge railway linking Tallinn, Estonia; Parnu, Estonia; Riga, Latvia; Panevezys and Kaunas, Lithuania; Vilnius; and Warsaw. The Lithuanian section spans 392 kilometres.
Originally slated for 2026, its completion has been pushed back to 2030 and meeting even this is proving a challenge.
The project forms part of the EU’s North Sea-Baltic military mobility corridor and is considered strategically important for both civilian transport and the movement of military personnel and equipment across the region.
EU rules call for core trans-European transport network projects to be completed until 2030, with the wider network due for completion by 2050. The Tallinn-Warsaw railway is scheduled to become operational until 2030.
However, the European Court of Auditors said in January that Rail Baltica would not meet the 2030 deadline and that there was currently no confirmed final completion date. (LRT)