Lithuanian, Latvian PMs call for ramping up political coordination of Rail Baltica

2025-02-20
LETA/BNS/TBT Staff

VILNIUS - The Lithuanian and Latvian prime ministers on Thursday called for ramping up the coordination of the Rail Baltica European gauge railway project at political level.

"We talked in detail about the Rail Baltica project, which is huge in scope and complex in technical parameters, and therefore requires very constructive and thorough political coordination," Lithuanian Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas said after a meeting with his Latvian counterpart, Evika Silina, in Riga.

"Unfortunately, today we have to state that we've lost time, costs have gone up, and now it will require the involvement of all three Baltic prime ministers and their teams to align and balance the costs and timeline of the project," he added.

Silina also said that the Rail Baltica project and its management will continue to be coordinated at the prime ministerial level.

"We've agreed that contacts will be maintained at the prime ministerial level. We'll continue to keep our hands on this project at the prime ministerial level, so everyone knows that we have the political will to complete this project," she said.

As the Rail Baltica project's costs have surged 2.6 times since 2017, Lithuanian officials have said that the main issue is not funding, but the pace of implementation. Last year, nearly 1.5 billion euros of funding was secured for Rail Baltica-related work in Lithuania.

In late January, RB Rail, the Baltic joint venture coordinating Rail Baltica, requested another 325 million euros in EU funding for the project.

LTG Infra, the infrastructure arm of Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways, LTG), has recently announced that it is taking over some of the track-laying work from RB Rail in an effort to speed up progress in Lithuania.

In a joint report released last June, Baltic auditors warned that completing the planned works across the three countries could require an additional 10-19 billion euros, with 8.7 billion euros needed in Lithuania alone.