Photo credits: Priit Simson / Ilmar Saabas / Sander Hallaste | Delfi Meedia collage
The ten-year embarrassing saga resembles a Latvian joke about slow Estonians — but this time the roles are reversed.
Meelis Niinepuu, entrepreneur, board member of Rail Baltica Business Network Estonia
One of Rail Baltica’s fundamental questions is whether the Baltic region will remain on Europe’s periphery or become part of one of Europe’s largest economic and transport corridors. If Latvia cannot pull itself together on the RB project, Estonia will have to seriously consider a maritime alternative to transport, following Finland’s example.
The project’s failure would simultaneously become the greatest failure of Baltic cooperation in the last hundred years. Are we prepared to live with that title?
Lack of funding doesn’t worry me when it comes to Rail Baltica — the primary problem is a lack of political will. The problem does not lie in Tallinn, Vilnius, or Brussels. It lies in Riga, at Brīvības bulvāris 36.
If Latvia decides to remain on the periphery, it will not do so alone — because then we will all remain there together as a region.
Estonia cannot be a corridor to Europe alone, Lithuania cannot alone connect the Baltics to Poland and Central Europe, and Poland cannot alone make the Baltic states a natural part of Europe’s rail network. If Latvia, which sits in the middle of this corridor, continues to hesitate, it risks a large part of the Baltic economic space.
Enough of cooperation only during joint national holidays and celebrations.
I’ve seen this film before
I have a personal relationship with Rail Baltica, having witnessed the birth of the joint venture up close and, as a consultant in 2015, led the preparation of Rail Baltica’s European funding application. In hindsight, it’s interesting to recall that back then, the weakest link in the project seemed to be not Latvia but Lithuania.
Unlike the current situation in Latvia, more than ten years ago the main question was not whether to build Rail Baltica at all — political will and agreement were in place. The Baltic prime ministers, ministers, and parliaments had agreed that a fast, European standard-gauge connection would be built from Tallinn through Riga and Kaunas toward Warsaw.
Then the debate about how to do it began.
Lithuania had by then already built a trial section of 1,435 mm gauge track from the Polish border toward Kaunas. The problem was that it did not meet Rail Baltica’s actual ambition. It was essentially an 80–120 km/h connection whose curve geometry did not allow speeds of up to 240 km/h, as it passed through several Lithuanian villages at grade level.
Lithuania’s argument was simple — they already had European gauge track and wanted to use it. But that was roughly the same as claiming that if a road is paved, it is suitable as a motorway. Gauge alone does not make a railway a fast European rail connection.
The governance question was even more complicated, as the Lithuanian delegation did not want the newly established joint venture RB Rail AS to genuinely lead the project centrally. There were even claims that the Lithuanian constitution did not permit such a business model, and that all trains, drivers, tracks, and tariffs in Lithuania must remain under Lithuanian control alone.
At such a moment, the inevitable question arose: how then does the Lithuanian constitution permit, for example, international air traffic? Does a plane have to land at the Lithuanian border to change its pilot, aircraft, and price list? Of course not. International connections work precisely because states agree on common cross-border standards and rules.
The same principle had to apply to Rail Baltica.
If each country builds its own small national railway and calls it a shared European corridor, we are deceiving ourselves. Ten years ago, nothing indicated that the main problem for the new, fast European rail connection would be anyone other than Lithuania.
The weakest link has shifted
In 2015, we asked Lithuania: do you genuinely want a fast Rail Baltica, or do you want to sell your existing slow section as Rail Baltica? That question now must be asked of Latvia instead: do you actually want this project at all? Lithuania has moved forward in the meantime; Estonia is moving too.
Ten years ago, the debate was about how and where to build; now in Latvia the debate is about whether to complete Rail Baltica at all. This ten-year embarrassing saga resembles a Latvian joke about slow Estonians — but this time the roles are reversed.
Latvia is, however, the heart and backbone of the entire project, because it is through Latvia that the connections between Tallinn, Riga, Kaunas, Warsaw, and also Helsinki become a unified, functioning whole. It is through Latvia that Estonian and Finnish goods can move overland to Central Europe, and Lithuania’s and Poland’s fast connection northward gains its real meaning.
Latvia should now be asking itself: how much does it cost to lose this opportunity?
While Latvia shuffles its feet, Estonia must look to the sea
Estonia cannot complete Rail Baltica alone. We can build our own section, develop the Muuga deep-water port and terminals, create regional connectivity and do our own homework — but we cannot turn a dead end into a European corridor.
If Latvia decides to shuffle its feet for the next few years and pretend that previous agreements mean nothing, we too must seriously reconsider whether we should write off Rail Baltica’s continental ambition and instead follow Finland’s example.
Presenting a partially completed corridor as a finished European transport connection is clear self-deception.
Finland is, in a logistical sense, an island. It lacks a land connection to the heart of Europe in the way Germany, Poland, or Denmark does. Yet Finland’s economy is not paralyzed, because it has tied itself to Rotterdam, Hamburg, Antwerp, Stockholm, Travemünde, Gdynia, and other major ports and logistics hubs through regular maritime transport.
Finland has understood that if you are logistically an island, you must turn maritime connectivity into a strength. Estonia also has the prerequisites — we have strong ports in Muuga and Paldiski, functioning connections to Finland and Sweden, and Tallink Silja.
If the full Rail Baltica corridor does not materialise, Estonia must more deliberately build itself into a Nordic maritime logistics hub. That means more ports, shipping, ro-ro connections, cargo flows toward Finland, a stronger role for Paldiski and Muuga, and developing the Tallinn–Helsinki twin-city concept and unified economic space.
The lesson of the Orange Railway
Latvia needs to see the bigger picture — and it doesn’t need to be found only in Brussels. It can also be found in Estonian history.
More than 150 years ago, the Paldiski–Tallinn–Narva–St. Petersburg railway was mockingly called the “Orange Railway.” Critics considered it an expensive caprice whose purpose was to supply the St. Petersburg elite with exotic fruits through Paldiski’s ice-free port, serving only a very narrow interest group.
History, however, took a different course.
The railway built at the time not only served the existing economy but also created new business. Settlements and towns popped up around the stations, cargo flows changed, and Northern Estonia’s connection to larger markets improved. Here we see the paradox of every great connection: before completion, people ask where all those passengers and goods will come from. After completion, it turns out that the connection itself brought the new passengers, goods, and businesses — and only then do people wonder why it wasn’t built sooner.
With Rail Baltica, the framing of the problem is the same. If we only ask how many people will travel from Riga to Tallinn or from Tallinn to Warsaw tomorrow, we are asking too small a question. We must instead ask: what companies, logistics flows, industrial parks, and supply chains could emerge once the Baltic states are finally connected to the heart of Europe via a standard-gauge rail corridor?
Baltijas ceļš and Rail Baltica
Baltic cooperation is spoken of often — we share history, security, a European future. Yet neighbourly relations do not live on festive speeches alone. When the Estonian armed forces participated in liberating Latvian territory from the Landeswehr during the War of Independence, was that necessarily a convenient decision? Was the Baltic Chain (Baltijas ceļš) anyone’s private interest? It was not.
Those remarkable joint efforts stemmed from a broader understanding that the Baltic states are stronger together than apart. We are bound by a shared security and transport space.
Rail Baltica is not the Baltic Chain, but the principle is similar: at certain strategic moments, the Baltic states cannot think only of themselves. If the backbone breaks in the middle, we all become weaker.
An entrepreneur looks at all this very practically. A connection either creates a market or it doesn’t; a terminal either brings cargo or it doesn’t; a delivery time either improves or it doesn’t; and an investor either comes or goes elsewhere.
Rail Baltica Business Network has, over more than ten years of operation, brought together the region’s major shippers, logistics companies, railway enterprises, ports, terminal operators, and other businesses for whom Rail Baltica represents a real opportunity and a multiplier for their operations.
For our business network’s members, the added value accompanying RB is clear and credible. Beyond the question of travelling to Riga, there is an additional dimension: can the Baltic economic space offer a new logistics connection between Central Europe, the Nordic region, Mediterranean ports, and local markets? Simple business logic.
Three questions for Latvia
The 2015 Rail Baltica disputes taught me one thing: Baltic cooperation is not automatic. I can see now that it has to be built anew each time.
I would like to put three simple questions to Latvia. First: when will the final financing decision be made? Second: what is a realistic timeline — not a political wishful dream? And third: does Latvia accept Rail Baltica as a unified international corridor, or does it wish to continue operating within the logic of a national railway?
If Latvia wants to be the heart of Rail Baltica, it needs to demonstrate that through decisions. If Latvia does not want or cannot cooperate with its northern neighbours, Estonia must draw its own conclusions. It is not fair to talk about a European overland corridor while at the same time letting Estonia build a new railway up against Latvian protected nature areas for another ten years in the hope that something will eventually materialise.
In that case, Estonians will have to choose a different route and connect to Europe through ports, shipping, Finland-oriented logistics, and the sea.
That scenario is not an outright catastrophe, but it would mean working toward an entirely different strategy. It would also stand as an example of the greatest failure of Baltic cooperation in the past hundred years.
