News

On 28 February Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Petras Vaitiekūnas and the European Coordinator for the Rail Baltica project Pavel Telička discussed the project implementation process.

They discussed the project implementation progress and challenges, cooperation of all participating states - Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland, as well as the study results of the project possibilities and the priorities and course of implementation.

Minister of Foreign Affairs P. Vaitiekūnas once again noted that the Rail Baltica project was important to Lithuania and its integration into the trans-European transport networks.

“This project shall guarantee rapid and high-quality movement of goods, services and people within the European Union”, Minister of Foreign Affairs P. Vaitiekūnas remarked.

The Minister mentioned that Lithuania is ready to implement the project, the decision was made to start the engineering of the section between Polish-Lithuanian border and Marijampolė in 2007. Lithuanian Government also plans to allocate 140 million euros for the project development during the term of Financial Perspective 2007-2013.

The purpose of the visit of the European Coordinator for the Rail Baltica project Pavel Telička is acquaint Lithuania with the basic issues, potential problems and partner positions in relation to the project implementation.

Rail Baltica is the project of the European Commission and the Baltic States aiming to integrate the Baltic railway infrastructure into the trans-European transport networks. This shall guarantee a rapid and comfortable communication between the Baltic countries and other European Union Member States.

By 2010 it is scheduled to build the railway Warsaw-Kaunas section, by 2014 - Kaunas-Riga section and until 2016 – Riga-Tallinn section.