Wednesday's meeting focused, for example, on the partially allocated European Union funding, which currently provides for work only on the main route, leaving the Riga stations behind. However, there is still no clarity on the further financing of the project.
It was also discussed that the Baltic countries would buy the materials for the construction together.
As Kristīne Malnača, Deputy State Secretary for Rail Baltica at the Ministry of Transport, revealed after the meeting, two different working groups are also currently active. One is on how to include Riga in the first stage of the project, the other on finances.
"The finance working group is working on a new financing model: from which funding sources could we implement this scenario proposed by the technical working group? As we know, two sources of funding have been used so far: funding from the European Commission and co-financing from the national budget. But it is now clear that we need to broaden the range of funding sources in order to move forward successfully," Malnača noted.
The fact that not all of the planned projects will be financed with EU money was also confirmed by Transport Minister Kaspars Briškens (Progressives) after the Committee meeting. At the same time, the Minister did not clarify whether any additional funding for the project would be requested already in next year's budget or in the longer term.
