By Lynda Myer
Although, almost $1.32bn budget has been granted to the Rail Baltica project from the EU and national governments till now, the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) has also signed an extra cross-border grant agreement relating to funding for Rail Baltica’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).
CINEA comprises a joint venture between RB Rail, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications of Estonia, the Ministry of Transport of Latvia, and the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Lithuania.
The whole value of this contract is $22.86m (€19.7m) and funding a maximum of $19.38m (€16.7m) or 85% of total eligible costs will be up to CEF, while the governments of the Baltic states is due to provide the remaining 15%.
The design of the Kaunas infrastructure maintenance facility and railway infrastructure in the station area (Phase I) in Lithuania, are the processes that this grant agreement covers.
Moreover, the intended contract involves design modifications to facilitate Riga Node operational developments in Latvia, as well as the modification of Riga Central Station railway’s detailed technical design on the basis of the Rail Baltica operational plan in Latvia.
In addition to these activities, Parnu County planning support in Estonia and research on the Cekule site, which is going to involve the identification of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the former military area of Latvia, are also the other subsets of the agreement.
