Former “Unity” Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma categorically disagrees with several conclusions of the interim report of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Rail Baltica railway project.
The Rail Baltica Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry’s interim report contains a number of conclusions about the time when Straujuma was Prime Minister. She served as Prime Minister from January 2014 to February 2016.
The interim report concludes that at the November 2014 meeting of the National Management Group it was decided to continue the study of the R5, R7 and R8 options for the Riga connection, but in December 2014 the National Management Group decided to approve the advancement of the R7 option for the Rail Baltica Riga connection for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), without taking into account that R7 was not the most optimal option compared to the others and was also one of the most expensive options.
Consequently, on the 17th of February 2015, the Government examined an informative report prepared by the MoT, which decided to push forward only one option (R7) for EIA, without clearly mentioning the other options for the Riga connection and the cost comparison of all Riga connections, the report states.
At the same time, the Commission noted that at its February meeting, the Government had approved an EIA for a Rail Baltica route variant for which detailed technical investigation was still being carried out.
However, Straujuma’s letter, sent to the Commission of Inquiry and obtained by LETA, states that the information report approved at the meeting on the 17th of February 2015 does not include a specific choice of the Rail Baltica route, but it provides information on the options chosen for the EIA process and the justification of this choice made by the MoT.
In the introductory part of the informative report, the MoT informed the Cabinet of Ministers about the progress in the development of Rail Baltica and pointed out that eight possible EIA options had been analysed using a multi-factor method, with two options being advanced for a detailed EIA study, the letter states.
In her letter, Straujuma emphasised that the meeting had conceptually endorsed the Baltic States’ joint draft of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) application, the list of activities and actions to be carried out by Latvia, as well as the solutions found by the Baltic States in the CEF application preparation process, as described in the information report. The meeting also instructed the MoT to ensure the preparation of the application for the first call of the CEF in accordance with the application form and its annexes for the entire funding of the Cohesion Fund part of the CEF available to Latvia, and to submit the prepared application to the European Commission by the 26th of February 2015.
The Cabinet also decided to authorise the Minister of Transport to sign a joint Baltic support letter for the application submitted to the first call of the CEF.
In her letter, Straujuma reminded that she held the post of Prime Minister until the 11th of February 2016.
“I would like to additionally point out that on the 24th of August 2016, the Government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Kučinskis, reviewed the Cabinet of Ministers’ decree “On the approval of the proposed activities for the construction of the European standard gauge public use railway infrastructure line Rail Baltica”, in the annotation of which the MoT informed about the results of the EIA, proposing a specific location of the Rail Baltica route,” Straujuma wrote in her letter.
In her letter, the former Prime Minister draws attention to the fact that the proposed Rail Baltica route option is also labelled “recommended” in the report of the 24th of August 2016.
“Given my experience and understanding of the Rail Baltica project, I believe that the Kučinskis government decided on the Rail Baltica route by decree on the 24th of August 2016. There was no real justification for such a decision at that particular meeting. Instead of deciding on the approval of the route, the final EIA report could have been approved, with the government’s protocol stating that the location of the route and the stages of its implementation would be determined once the full scope of the Rail Baltica development study – the EIA, the financial assessment, the architectural and cultural heritage studies – had been prepared. The route and its implementation phases, as well as their sources of financing, should be determined in a government decision before the announcement of the tender for construction projects in late 2017 or 2018,” Straujuma said.
The Commission’s interim report also mentions that after the Prime Minister’s resignation, the Government approved the location of the line in Latvia by its August 2016 decree on the approval of the proposed activities for the construction of the European standard gauge public use railway infrastructure line Rail Baltica, before the assessment of the final report of the general partnership RB Latvija of 31 October 2016 by the MoT. This report analyses the route location options – R5, R5 and R7.
In her letter, Straujuma explains that the final report of RB Latvija of the 31st of October 2016 (the final report for Year One of the conceptually supported project on the 17th of February 2015) clearly states that there are three possible options for the further development of the RB route – R5, R5 and R7, which have to be decided upon.
“Taking into account all the above, I reiterate that I categorically disagree with the opinion expressed during the Commission’s meeting that the Rail Baltica route option R7 was adopted during my term of office as Prime Minister,” Straujuma stresses in her letter.
LETA has already reported that the Commission’s interim report summarises 13 conclusions, while the Commission plans to present its proposals for further development of the project in its final report.
It has already been reported that on the 13th of June this year, the Saeima decided to set up a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the mistakes made in the progress of the Rail Baltica project, following a proposal by 34 MPs. The Commission has been given a six-month deadline.