Opinion piece by Ilona Bērziņa
Recently, I read that Latvia’s national debt will total 19.3 billion euros at the end of this year. At the beginning of the year, the country’s external debt stood at 17.8 billion euros. Against this background, the “crafty” idea of borrowing another billion to dump down the black hole that is the construction of the Rail Baltica route is irresponsible, to say the least.
Has anyone ever assessed how casually the millions allocated to this project have been wasted in the past? Has anyone been held accountable for slapping all sorts of extras on the originally planned railway line? Nobody has been held accountable, and it is unlikely that there will be anyone. Because regardless of which political group, proudly calling itself the government, has had any say in the Rail Baltica project, it is still all made of the same mud.
The decision-makers know each other well and (at least in this case) the crow will not peck the crow in the eye. Progressives, who as newcomers to big politics could appeal to their purity and innocence, are also up to their necks in Rail Baltica dungwash. I have repeatedly reminded you, and I will remind you again, that the party’s delegate, Transport Minister Kaspars Briškens, has worked for the central coordinator of Rail Baltica, RB Rail, since the establishment of it in 2014. Briškens’ previous positions are listed in detail on the Cabinet of Ministers’ website.
To quote: “2014.10-2016.10. – Member of the Supervisory Board, Rail Baltica joint venture RB Rail AS; 2016.11-2019.08 – Business Development Manager, Rail Baltica joint venture RB Rail AS; 2019.09-2022.05 – Strategy and Development Manager, Rail Baltica joint venture RB Rail AS; 2021.12-2022.12 – Member of the Supervisory Board, JSC “Pasažieru vilciens”. The last entry, however, could refer more to the troubles with ViVi trains… Then follows his political escapade with self-praise for declassifying Rail Baltica documents and revealing the true costs, as well as another big fight for funding for the project. Was this Briškens, who for eight years was very close to the management of this project, really a different Briškens to the one who is now painstakingly distancing himself from all the, pardon my French, shit that has been piling over the years?
When it became clear that the project had quadrupled in cost, and in fact 85% of Rail Baltica’s construction costs were for the main line, not the railway stations, the bridge piers over the Daugava and God only knows what else, it would be logical to be very scrupulous about exactly what the EU is funding in this project and put the rest aside. Instead, we are running around the corridors of Europe with our arms outstretched, begging for a “fiver”.
Let’s fantasise for a moment that Europe has given us money to build a motorway, but we have spent it building pubs, car parks, brothels in the middle of a field and we want to beg for more money to build a supermarket… And we are madly surprised when it turns out that we have to pay for all these nice things ourselves, because the motorway that Europe gave us money for does not exist… This is exactly the situation we find ourselves in with Rail Baltica.
A lot of money has been wasted, but we can be sure that no one involved in this project will ever admit that. Instead, it is better to borrow a billion euros, shove it into patching up yet another hole in the Rail Baltica budget and quietly push the repayment of this money onto the taxpayer. Because the taxpayer is already a strange creature, on whose back burden after burden can be piled up, and he, after a little nudge, pays. Meanwhile, next year, the Treasury will have to set aside around half a billion euros to cover the interest on Latvia’s foreign debt. Perhaps the government is convinced that, given this backdrop, no one will notice the interest on another billion euros anyway. As it is, the people have other things to complain about, such as the cut in food parcels for people on low incomes or the reduced coefficients for calculating housing benefit.
We are also going to have to spend a lot this winter (from the point of view of taxpayers, not the government) on the conservation of the unfinished buildings under this project. Again, the question is: why start building something if you don’t know where all the money to finish it will come from?
And more. Kaspars Vingris, the former head of European Railway Lines, the promoter of the Latvian part of Rail Baltica, told the Saeima’s Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry that the project has also become more expensive because it has been “re-planned hundreds of times”. As a result, costs have also changed by millions of euros, and not in a downward direction.
Another tragicomic story is about the lone bridge support in the Daugava, which we built there this summer because we were afraid of losing European money! At the same time, professionals in the field warn that this support could also tip. If that happens, the bridge support will be yet another object that will mysteriously become more expensive. The Rail Baltica project is full of such flops, but since it is money from the EU and the Latvian state budget, no one is worried. Just as it does not bother anyone that the borrowed billion, if we manage to get it, will have to be paid back by someone.
So far, no one seems to be thinking about it. They seem to be thinking about how to grab more from the pockets of European taxpayers, including Latvians. But the project has basically been a failure, and it will take a lot of time and effort to clean up the mess. We can therefore not expect Rail Baltica to be able to apply the guise of a public-private partnership (PPP). It is highly doubtful whether any private investor will be willing to invest its private funds in such a highly costly and chaotic project, which is also burdened with debt.