06.09.2018
Today, the government approved the European Commission's proposals for a new funding period for the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). According to the Commission's proposals, funding for important cross-border infrastructure projects, such as Rail Baltic, would be maintained at the current level.
In June this year, the European Commission came up with proposals for financing transport projects in the new EU budget period. These are preliminary proposals that are still being discussed by the member states and the European Parliament, but based on current knowledge, there is no need to change the funding principles for Rail Baltic and the expectation of the current maximum subsidy rate of 85%.
Minister of Economic Affairs and Tourism Kadri Simson According to the European Commission, the proposal to maintain funding for cross-border infrastructure projects is an important step towards a more united Europe. “The Rail Baltic project meets all the criteria for the CEF and the priority projects of the Trans-European Transport Network and is therefore very clearly competitive for CEF funding. This is also important to remember for those who doubt the viability of the project, when the topic of discussion is all sorts of other alternatives for building an international railway besides the one already agreed. Every even remotely realistic alternative proposed has a price tag of at least hundreds of millions, but the EU support rate is certainly not even close to 85%. Various top-level cost-effectiveness analyses have shown the Rail Baltic project to be a solidly profitable undertaking, and in this form Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are going ahead with it,” noted Minister Simson.
Although the European Commission has proposed that the EU support rate for projects financed by the Cohesion Fund in the new budgetary period would be up to 70%, the general EU funding practice has been based on the principle that the implementation of cross-border projects with (high EU added value and) broad impact is supported with a higher support rate. The European Commission has proposed funding priority cross-border projects, such as Rail Baltic, with a support rate of 85%.
Commission representatives, led by the President of the European Commission, have repeatedly expressed their support for Rail Baltic as one of the EU's most important cross-border projects connecting peripheral regions and promoting sustainable and safe transport. The current proposal shows that these statements are also planned to be covered.
According to the European Commission's proposal, the total CEF funding for the new period is 42,3 billion euros, of which 30,6 billion is planned to support the implementation of transport, 8,7 billion energy and 3 billion digitalization projects.
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