Deputy Proposed a Deadly Amendment to the Rail Baltica Law

Tomorrow, the Saeima's Economic Affairs Committee will review the amendments submitted for the second reading of the Law on the Implementation of the Rail Baltica Project. Surprisingly, but true: the project has been legally implemented for over 10 years, yet there has not been a law that specifies the responsible agencies for the project and clearly defines the project's goals. Only now are parliamentarians, at the government's suggestion, attempting to adopt the corresponding law. To ensure that the consideration of the regulatory act is not boring, independent deputy Alexander Kiršteins proposed to state that "The purpose of the law is to suspend the design and construction of the Rail Baltica railway infrastructure and related facilities on the territory of Latvia simultaneously with the moment of the entry into force of this law." In other words, the politician called for an end to the suffering and to stop the project, for which there is still a catastrophic lack of funds. Deputy A. Kiršteins also proposed an amendment stating that "the Cabinet of Ministers decides to withdraw Latvia from the intergovernmental Rail Baltica project due to its economic disadvantage, multiple exceedance of initial costs, and lack of funding sources." It is evident that these proposals from the deputy will be rejected. Equally interesting is the proposal from the leader of the coalition parliamentary faction of the Union of Greens and Farmers, Harijs Rokpelnis: "Article 1_1. Financing of the Rail Baltica Project (1) The implementation of the Rail Baltica project is financed from the following sources: 1) European Union policy instruments and other foreign financial aid instruments - in the amount of 85 percent of the total eligible project expenses; 2) state budget funds in an amount not exceeding 15 percent of the total eligible project expenses. (2) The funding allocated for the implementation of the Rail Baltica project is used only for the tasks established by this Law." The essence of Deputy Rokpelnis's amendments is to prohibit spending more than 15% of the total costs for Rail Baltica from the state budget on this project of the century, as was promised back at the launch of this project, more than 10 years ago.