This would include a national co-financing of €2 million in 2024, €17.1 million in 2025, €24.2 million in 2026, €12.8 million in 2027 and €4.9 million in 2028. In addition, value-added tax amounts to €76,894,527.
The Transport Ministry's report states that the tenth call of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) has not allocated EC funding to activities that have been supported so far, including land acquisition as well as activities implemented by the RB Rail joint venture (quality control, global project coordination).
The Ministry's report states that the decision taken by the EC to support activities with reduced funding breaks the usual ratio (85/15) between the two sources of funding - the EC and the national budget, thus having to increase the share of the national budget to finance activities not supported by the EC or supported at a reduced level.
Dividing the costs of unsupported activities equally among all Baltic countries, Latvia's share between 2024 and 2028 amounts to a total of €23.3 million.
The Transport Ministry's report underlines that Rail Baltica is a cross-border project and if Latvia is unable to secure national funding for the implementation of the project and refuses to enter into financing agreements because it is unable to co-finance the activities, this could pose a significant risk to the further implementation of the project in Lithuania and Estonia as well, as there is a possibility that the CINEA cancels the decision to grant funding for the Rail Baltica project due to the missing Latvian section.
The Transport Ministry warns in its report that in that case Latvia will lose the €167.1 million of CEF funding allocated to it, without being able to apply for it in future calls and without the possibility to re-apply in future calls for activities that have already received a positive decision from the EC.
The Transport Ministry will urge the Cabinet of Ministers to ask the EC to explain in more detail the non-allocation of EU co-financing to essential construction activities of the Rail Baltica railway project, as such activities have always been co-financed by the EU in the past, and at a high intensity - up to 85%.
The Transport Ministry is aware that the total EU funding for cross-border transport projects is insufficient but considers that "this change of the rules of the game for previously eligible Rail Baltica activities is clearly ill-considered".
In June this year, the Parliament approved a parliamentary commission of inquiry into Rail Baltica, which aims to identify mistakes made in the implementation of the project, while making it a priority issue for the government.
The cost of the ambitious Rail Baltica project has risen to almost €24 billion from less than €6 billion initially. The project's cost increase is so huge that only the first phase of the project is planned to be completed by 2030 – essentially a single set of tracks instead of the double tracks originally envisaged.
