Baltics threaten to hold up EU coronavirus recovery fund over rail project
27 Jan 2021 EWR Online
(From L) Latvia's Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, Estonia's Prime Minister Jüri Ratas and Lithuania's President Gitanas Nauseda | Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are determined to secure funding for a high-speed railway link connecting them to the EU, even if doing so means holding the bloc's recovery fund as ransom.
The Rail Baltica project was expected to receive €1.4 billion from the bloc's long-term budget under a July deal among EU leaders, but the European Parliament is putting up a fight over earmarking funding for any specific project or group of countries.
In a bid to ensure the project gets support, Baltic countries are now threatening to withhold a crucial step needed for the bloc’s €750 billion recovery fund to launch.
In a letter dated January 18 and seen by POLITICO, the three countries' leaders asked Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, to ensure that ongoing negotiations on transport funding respect EU leaders’ decision to allocate €1.4 billion to Rail Baltica.
Estonia’s caretaker Prime Minister Jüri Ratas, Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda write that doing so will ensure the smooth ratification of the so-called Own Resources Decision in the three countries.
All EU countries must ratify the decision as a precondition for the European Commission to borrow money on the capital markets and redistribute it as grants and low-interest loans to EU countries — a process that is expected to take a few months — to enable the money to flow by summer.
