Baltic States, Poland Urge for Completion of Rail Baltic
Chairmen of the European Union Affairs Committees in the Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish parliaments met in Warsaw on April 18 to discuss the development of transport connections and energy networks, budgetary policy, and enhancing the competitiveness of the region.
According to Chairman of the Estonian Parliament's European Union Affairs Committee Taavi Rõivas, the meeting highlighted the common interest of the participating four countries in implementing a fast rail line between Tallinn and Warsaw. "The need for the Rail Baltica line became especially urgent last year, when the ash cloud from Iceland tested the whole European land transport system to its limit," said Rõivas. "Back then, the route between the Baltics and Western Europe turned out to be one of the biggest bottlenecks on the whole continent."
Rõivas suggested that the situation is going to be especially favorable for promoting the common interests of the four EU member countries in the near future because of the ongoing negotiations on the financial framework for the next EU budget (for the years 2014-2020). Janusz Lewandowski, the European Commissioner currently responsible for the new EU budget plan, comes from Poland, and Siim Kallas, the European Commissioner responsible for the EU transport policy, from Estonia.
"Although the Commissioners cannot promote the interests of their home countries in the European Commission, they certainly possess the experience and understanding of the needs and problems facing their countries and the surrounding region," added Rõivas.
This comes less than a week after Latvian Ministry of Transport's head of transit policy, Andris Maldups said on April 14 that Latvia will have to postpone participation in the Rail Baltica project. According to him it would be extremely difficult under current circumstances to obtain co-financing in the range of 70 million euros that is required to match up the 20 million euros in funding from the European Commission's Trans-European Transport Network authority.
Sigrid Maasen