Connecting Europe Days, the flagship event organized by the European Commission Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE) and the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) took place in Lyon, France, from 28 to 30 June gathering stakeholders from the whole of EU to debate on transport sector developments in Europe. As part of the event the Rail Balitca joint venture RB Rail AS together with other Rail Baltica global project delivery organizations met to discuss concrete steps to mitigate the negative effects of the geopolitical situation, the Connecting Europe Facility 2021 Call results where the project received more than 350 million EUR as well as opportunities to strengthen the implementation of Rail Baltica at Baltic and EU level.
In addition to numerous panel debates of the conference, an exhibition was organized, widely attended by the transport and mobility policy makers at EU and national level, industry peers and associations. Also, the Rail Baltica global project participated with a stand which was also visited by the European Commissioner for Transport Ms Adina Vălean.
In the North Sea – Baltic Corridor Forum, chaired by the Corridor EU Coordinator Ms Catherine Trautmann took place, during which the CEO and Chairperson of the Management Board of RB Rail AS Mr Agnis Driksna presented progress on the Rail Baltica implementation to other members of this forum of both national and EU level. Rail Baltica, once again was emphasized by Ms Trautmann to be a necessity and the swift implementation of which is of a great significance and an obligation. In the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine the need to ensure the EU’s strong support to Ukraine in the post-war transitional recovery and further strengthen military mobility in Europe was also discussed at the conference. Finally, at the event the results of first call of the new financial period were announced by the EU Commission and CINEA, emphasizing the high competition and diversity of the projects submitted.
As announced earlier, the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) received 399 proposals, for a total of 14 billion euros of requested co-funding. Out of these 135 project proposals were selected for funding of a total 5.4 billion euros across all EU Member States. The amount allocated to the Rail Baltica project is the third largest among all projects.
The Rail Baltica project was widely represented by high-level representatives from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications of Estonia, the Ministry of Transport of Latvia and the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Lithuania, as well as managements and top experts from the Rail Baltica national implementing bodies “Rail Baltic Estonia”, “Eiropas Dzelzceļa līnijas” and “LTG Infra”. The Rail Baltica joint venture delegation was attended by the Supervisory Board members and other Management Board members, led by Mr Agnis Driksna, CEO and Chairman of the Management Board at RB Rail AS.
During the Connecting Europe Days, a partnership agreement was signed between Rail Baltica Joint venture and TELT (www.telt-sas.com) to ensure further experience and best practise-sharing on the environmental, safety and large-scale multimodal infrastructure project implementation and railway operations.
Also, other insightful encounters with the strategic partners took place such as between the Chief Technical Officer of RB Rail AS Marc-Philippe El Beze took place, including with Josef Doppelbauer, the Executive Director of the European Union Agency for Railways to discuss among other issues progress of the Rail Baltica control-command and signalling subsystems procurement and deployment strategy development progress, Matthias Ruete, the European Coordinator for Transeuropean Transport Network (ERTMS), as well as Philippe Citroën, the Director General of UNIFE and Klaus Mindel, the UNISIG General Manager on ERTMS.
Photos from the event here.