Rail Baltica has received a EUR 184 million funding from the Connecting Europe Facility for the project until 2024.
With a 15% national co-financing, this investment reaches to EUR 216 million. In total, EUR 1.2 billion national and European funding is available for the implementation of the project across the three Baltic states.
This latest funding was awarded under the 2019 CEF Transport Call. The entire eligible funding made available to Cohesion countries in the Call was EUR 1.1 billion, and the competition between the Cohesion countries to receive the funding was very high.
In this competitive process, the Rail Baltica corridor has received the largest financial allocation or 55% from the total available funding of the 2019 CEF Cohesion Transport call. In addition to the EUR 184 million EU grant for the Rail Baltica sections in the Baltic States, EUR 422 million was granted to the Rail Baltica sections in Poland.
According to the CEF Committee vote, the Rail Baltica Global project has been allocated EUR 128 million for construction works and EUR 88 million for technical design and planning works.
The additional financing “will provide the necessary funding for all key global project activities in this area [technical design, planning and construction works], as well as provide maturity for the construction phase of Rail Baltica,” Agnis Driksna, Chairperson of the Management Board of RB Rail said.
In April, a tender was launched for electrification engineering services.
For the project, this year, Lithuania has launched construction tenders with a total value of EUR 475 million. Lithuania will continue the construction works at Kaunas railway transport node and a tender will be launched for the Kaunas – Latvian state border. Planning is ongoing for the Vilnius – Kaunas section followed by Kaunas node and Kaunas – Lithuanian/Polish state border section.
In Estonia, the technical design for Tallinn and Pärnu passenger terminals is proceeding and the tender for technical design of freight terminals, rolling stock and service depos is expected to be launched.
This year, Latvia will start the construction of the Riga Central station by the end of the year, the contract for Riga airport section will be signed. The design of the multimodal terminal in Salaspils will begin along with additional environmental impact assessments and a study railway network development in Riga node.
At the same time, Poland signed a contract for the construction of a Rail Baltica viaduct.
The RB Rail concluded detailed technical design procurement for 643 km of the line involving 39 proposals from 16 international and local companies.
It is expected that starting 2022 until 2025 major construction works will be performed for the creation of the new railway Baltic corridor.
To be completed, the project will also require additional funding from the next CEF Transport Calls, and in particular under the next EU MFF starting as of 2021, in order to complete the construction activities on time.
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