For years, the public has been told that the Rail Baltica project would cost less than €2 billion, even though the first contracts already announced cost increases. This was revealed by former Transport Minister Tālis Linkaits (New Conservative Party). Andris Kulbergs (United List), head of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, said that the cost increases had indeed been known for a long time. However, it was not reported to anyone, Kulbergs said, underlining in particular the responsibility of the then Minister Linkaits.
"The Minister did not inform the public or the Cabinet. I have a lot of questions - how, why? This is, after all, important information, after which there should be an important reaction. We would not be in the hole we are in today if this information had been presented in time," said the committee head.
Meanwhile, Linkaits said there was no reason to make any assumptions about one amount or another at that time:
"It was a joint decision of all three countries on how we communicate this project. We wait for the design to be completed, then we do this new 'CBA' or cost-benefit analysis. And then we would have that final amount that we can say publicly."
Jānis Vitenbergs (National Alliance), who took up the post of Transport Minister immediately after Linkaitis and headed the Transport Ministry for a relatively short time, also said that others knew about the cost increase:
"It was known for years, I would say, to everyone who was working on the project, but no one from the ministry passed on the information."
Also questioned at today's hearing was the current Minister of Welfare, Uldis Augulis (Greens and Farmers Union), who served as Transport Minister twice - from 2010 to 2011, and from 2016 to 2019. He was accused by committee chair Kulbergs of not giving the government enough choices on Rail Baltica, a point with which the minister strongly disagreed. At the same time, Augulis said that there were things that could have been done better during his ministership:
"There may have been some mistakes. Maybe something should have been done faster or more should have been demanded from the same RB Rail, which is what I said in the Commission, that we were waiting for technical regulations, which we could not wait for."
In June this year, the Saeima approved the Rail Baltica Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, which aims to identify errors in the project's implementation within six months, while at the same time making it a priority issue for the government. The Commission promises to produce a final report on the project's implementation shortcomings by December.
The cost of the ambitious Rail Baltica project has risen to almost €24 billion from less than €6 billion initially.
