"Today, [the] Rail Baltica joint venture of the Baltic States, RB Rail AS, announced the signing of an additional cross-border Grant Agreement for Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding, which amounted to 928 million euros CEF support. This substantial funding, combined with national co-financing from the three Baltic States, will exceed 1.1 billion euros, enabling necessary activities for further high-speed infrastructure development," said RB Rail.
"With the funding available from the newly signed financing agreements and from previous calls, the Rail Baltica global project has secured financing for the construction activities covering approximately the first 130 km of the Rail Baltica mainline." The total length of Rail Baltica is 870 km, 265 km of which passes through Latvia.
The amount will be added to the existing funding of over 1.6 billion euros secured for the implementation of Rail Baltica from CEF and national funding. Together with the recently approved additional financing, Rail Baltica has secured approximately 2.7 billion euros from CEF and national funding.
The project was originally slated to cost around 5.8 billion euros, though it looks increasingly likely that amount will be substantially exceeded by the time the first trains are due to start rolling in 2030. Rail Baltica is the largest railway infrastructure project in the history of the Baltic states. It will see the construction of an electrified, European-standard double-track high-speed railway linking Warsaw, Kaunas, Vilnius, Panevėžys, Riga, Pärnu, and Tallinn.
