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| Europe |
| 'Filled his pockets.' How the Balts squandered money on a road for Western troops |
| 2024-10-28 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Victor Lavrinenko [REGNUM] The Rail Baltica "European gauge" railway project, which the Baltic countries are building with EU money, is under threat. The "road to nowhere", which has been under construction for ten years, has become a very profitable enterprise, but not for the countries building it, but for the individuals involved. And it is in the interests of the Baltic officials that this project continues forever and never ends. The colossal amounts of money already allocated by the European Union for Rail Baltica somehow quietly disappeared into the pockets of those involved, and suddenly it turned out that there was no more money for further construction. What to do next with the gigantic unfinished construction? Now in Riga and Tallinn they are feverishly trying to come up with something. COLOSSAL WASTE The allocation of funds by the European Union for the construction of the Rail Baltica route was once lobbied by Estonian Siim Kallas, who took the post of European Commissioner for Transport. Siim is the father of the now former Prime Minister of Estonia Kaja Kallas, who has now been put in charge of EU foreign policy. The most interesting point is the significant increase in the budget. The initial estimate for the cost of the entire highway was 3.68 billion euros. In 2017, the figure was revised, increasing to 5.79 billion. A year ago, it became clear that the cost of the Latvian part of the project alone could grow to 8 billion euros. And four months ago, this figure was also adjusted: under certain conditions, the cost could “swell” to 9.6 billion. The audit showed that the deficit of the necessary budget on a regional scale could reach 10-19 billion, and the project implementation is years behind schedule. Meanwhile, the long-term EU budget until 2028 has allocated “only” 9 billion euros for the Rail Baltica project – and not just for Latvia, but for all three Baltic countries. The project’s implementers then proposed taking out a loan to complete the work, thereby increasing the country’s external debt. It is possible that due to a lack of funds the new railway will bypass Riga altogether, without entering it. The European Commission coordinator Kartin Trautman spoke categorically: supposedly, freight and passenger transportation on the Rail Baltica railway line should begin before 2030 – regardless of whether it is connected to the central station in Riga or not. This is a sore spot for Brussels: the European Commission expresses concerns that even 2030 will not be the final deadline for the completion of construction and that money for the project will have to be allocated in the future. Meanwhile, contractors are leaving the project for various reasons. At the end of April 2024, the chairman of the board of the state-owned company European Railway Lines (EDzL) and his assistant suddenly resigned without any clear explanation (“for personal reasons”). This company is working on the construction of Rail Baltica in Latvia. “You filled your pockets — give in to someone else,” Latvian residents joked on social media. At the same time, it became known that the state had terminated the contract with the Latvian-Spanish company Rere Ineco, which had undertaken to build 16 railway stations. The insolvency of the businessmen was to blame. But Latvian Transport Minister Kaspars Briškens is not losing his presence of mind and promises to optimize the Rail Baltica construction plan in such a way as to reduce costs by 35%. EVERYONE AND NO ONE IS TO BLAME On October 6, Briškens stated that Latvia currently has less than 1.5 billion euros at its disposal for the construction of the railway. In order to build it even “in the most minimal volume,” he said, “two to three times more” is needed. All hope is to wheedle the missing money out of the European Union. “If we set the task of completing the entire route by 2030 with the money that is available to us today, then this is an impossible task. It is impossible. We see that we are short at least 3-4 billion even for the most minimal volume,” Briškens admitted. According to the Latvian minister, much now depends on the decisions that will be made when planning the next budget of the European funds. The politician does not deny that according to the original plan of the project, the railway should have been built many years ago. But, as Briškens claims, the process has been delayed due to the “inaccuracy of the draft designs” made in the first half of the 2010s. According to him, “they were made by Latvian companies and perhaps they lacked the knowledge and technology to make better sketches.” Nevertheless, “based on these projects, the Cabinet of Ministers made a decision in 2016 regarding the geography of the route, including the main line through Riga.” The Latvian parliament convened a special investigative committee, and in August it concluded that it would be impossible to do without involving the prosecutor's office. And, of course, the question arose: what to do with the unfinished road next? Prime Minister Evika Silina loudly declared that she does not see "how we can still find additional funding for Rail Baltica in the budget now." However, as the head of the parliamentary investigative committee, Andris Kulbergs, emphasizes, even stopping the project will require significant expenses: “If money is not set aside at least for the conservation of what has already been built, this could result in losses of hundreds of millions of euros in a year or two.” Just to keep the project from stopping altogether, an additional 80 million euros must be urgently allocated. And if the project does stop, there is a risk that Latvia will have to return up to a billion euros to the EU. Kulbergs also emphasized another important detail: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia requested European funding for Rail Baltica together. And if one of the three countries does not fulfill its part of the task, the risks will also extend to the other participants in the project. Kulbergs emphasizes that work on the central railway station under construction in Riga cannot be stopped: the temporary retaining wall could collapse. And the supports of the future railway bridge across the Daugava cannot just stand there. The new structures of the railway terminal at the Riga airport need to be mothballed for the winter, but no money has been allocated for this. Andris Kulbergs said that the interim report of the parliamentary investigative committee is ready, but it does not include the names of those guilty of the massive embezzlement. "This is the first big problem: in Latvia, there was not a single person responsible for the entire project," the politician said, emphasizing "collective irresponsibility." He promised to find the culprits and avoid punishing only the "scapegoats," as in the case of the theft of money from the project to strengthen the border with Russia. "FOR TROOP TRANSPORT ONLY" The difficulties of their Latvian colleagues, however, do not bother the Estonian developers of the project – they express unwavering determination to move forward. In early September, the Baltic transport ministers discussed the idea of opening the Rail Baltic route for traffic "in parts". Later, the Estonian Minister of Infrastructure and Economy Vladimir Svet supported this idea. And now the developers of the Estonian part of the railway hope to launch the Tallinn-Pärnu connection not in 2030, but a year or two earlier. On October 24, the government decided to allocate another 4 million euros to Rail Baltica Estonia for current expenses. Compared to the previously announced tender for 1.3 billion, this is a small amount. However, "the saddest thing is that this project is in principle in question, since Latvia refused to invest its funds in it. That is, the track may end in the border town of Valga," warns opposition member of the Estonian parliament Alexander Chaplygin. Kaliningrad political scientist Alexander Nosovich writes that if all the billions of euros stolen over the decades of building the “road to nowhere” were added up and distributed to the population of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the Baltics would instantly catch up and surpass Switzerland in terms of GDP per capita. "All the experts who have ever addressed the topic of Rail Baltica have agreed that this project cannot have any common sense other than military. A narrow-gauge railway from Scandinavia to Central Europe through the Baltics can only be useful for transporting troops. It is not needed for anything else," Nosovich writes. In his opinion, the fact that Rail Baltica has been “slipping” for many years is good news – it shows that all the anti-Russian antics of the Baltic countries are their personal initiative, and the overseas hegemon is not planning a war with Russia in this region. Otherwise, those involved “would have been given a magic kick in the pants long ago and forced to finish building and launch the unfortunate narrow-gauge railway at a rapid pace.” Related: Rail Baltica 06/30/2024 'Eternal victim' Kaja Kallas will continue the EU’s course towards confrontation with Russia Rail Baltica 02/24/2024 Development of logistics routes on NATO's eastern flank Rail Baltica 09/24/2023 Biden's mythical elevators. Lithuania continues to dream about Ukrainian grain |
| Posted by:badanov |