On Wednesday, 12 October, Latvian Saeima’s Economic, Agricultural, Environmental and Regional Policy Committee approved in the third reading the Rail Baltica legislative draft.
The legislative draft will cover the construction of European standard high-speed railway infrastructure and prevent risks that may affect timely completion of the project in accordance with the approved funding.
As stressed by the committee’s chairman Krišjānis Feldmans, Rail Baltica project is an important object of national interest – it represents a transport logistical and infrastructure solution to help connect Baltic States with the rest of EU member states. He also stressed that the project’s completion on time is delayed by specific technical and special requirements from both state and municipal institutions’ as well as owners of foreign engineering networks.
It is planned that the project’s technical or special rules will not include requirements for the construction of structures, the construction of which is not covered in regulations and does not meet the project’s intended purpose.
This regulation will not apply to technical rules presented by the State Environment Service.
The legislative draft will also help preserve existing cultural monuments located within Rail Baltica project’s territory. If full or partial preservation of a monument is not possible, the Cabinet of Ministers will exclude it from the list of nationally protected cultural monuments. The State Inspection for Heritage Protection will issue rules for examination, registration, removal or transportation of the most valuable parts of cultural monuments.
Within Rail Baltica project’s territory and the territory chosen to house related structures it will be allowed to fell protected trees if no alternatives solutions are found. In this case it will be necessary to receive approval from the Nature Protection Office, the legislative draft suggests.
It is planned that the maximum length of the project’s implementation will be set at eight years.
The term for the development of a topographical plan for the public use railway infrastructure and related structures will be four years from the moment of registration in the local municipality’s database.
For the legislative draft to come into force, it will need to be passed by the Saeima.