According to the latest calculations, the first stage of Rail Baltic will cost €15 billion – three times more than the initial estimate for the whole project in 2017. The goal to have the mainline from Tallinn to the Polish border completed in six years is still in place, said head of RB Rail Marko Kivila.

"Certainly delivering a project in this time frame, delivering a major project like this, is challenging and there are risks involved, but that is our intended target," he said.

Kivila said the Baltic states expect the European Union's contribution to the project to be as large as possible. But the exact amount will not be known until after the coming European Parliament elections and the next budget is set.

The European Commission cannot make any promises at this time.

Magda Kopczynska, head of the European Commission's Directorate General for Mobility, said: "The challenge for the management team of Rail Baltic is to really make sure that the costs stay as slim as possible. Yes, the costs went up a little bit from the original estimates, but that's inevitable."

The countries previously had a self-financing rate of 15 percent, Kivila said: " But, given the increase in project costs, it is likely that the countries' own contribution may increase."

He said more money is being sought, both from different EU funds or in loans.

The European Commission has said it is ready to help, but the construction needs to be sped up.

"It is important to say, and apologies for that, that we start digging and building," Kopczynska said.

Minister for Climate Kristen Michal (Reform) agreed. "At the moment construction prices are more reasonable, the faster we build, the cheaper we are likely to get," he told Wednesday's "Aktuaalne kaamera".

The minister said Estonia's situation is better than Latvia's or Lithuania's in terms of both the budget and the pace of construction. But, at the same time, cuts need to be made. In the first stage, a railway with one pair of tracks, not two, would be built across Estonia.

"Other countries have the same solution. Although in Lithuania, for example, it is planned that the Kaunas-Vilnius interconnection could be delayed from 2030. Likewise, the connection to Riga is only from the south and there will be no ring railroad. At the moment, we have usage forecasts that allow us to put the railway into operation in 2030, so there will be no bottlenecks," Kivila said.

An initial plan to lower the operating speed south of Pärnu for a limited time to save on the construction of eco-viaducts has now been abandoned.

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