Rail Baltica project difficulties are behind us, says Mačiulis

Mačiulis said that in August last year a train travelled between the Polish city of Bialystok to Kaunas for the first time in 76 years.

“It was a symbolic route, illustrating the progress on the project which clearly shows that we are pretty close to the finish line.”

The Office of the President said yesterday that Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the entire European Union is concerned that all the work be carried out rapidly and the project would be completed in time.

The discussion on the next stages and progress on the Rail Baltica initiative was organized by Parliamentary Economic and European Affairs Committee and representatives of the European Commission responsible for the coordination of the project as well as project partners from Latvia and Estonia attended.

On February 16 this year, Lithuania, together with Latvia and Estonia, applied for funding for the next phases of the project from the European Commission an application from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) fund.

Lithuanian is seeking €197 million in funding or around 85% of the total project value for works in Lithuania which will reach €231 million in total. The European Commission’s decision on the CEF funding should be announced this summer.

LRT