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Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania they will be soon connected with each other and with the rest ofEuropepassing for Warsawthanks to one new railway at high speed 870 kilometers long note with the name of RailBaltica. The project was born in 2001 with the signing of a cooperation agreement between the transport ministers of the three Baltic countries, but the first real memorandum useful for its implementation was signed only In 2010engaging also Poland.
Thanks to Rail Baltica, travel times between the capitals will be halved, with the journey between Estonia and Lithuania taking just three and a half hours instead of the current seven. The project is designed primarily to facilitate the movement of peoplebut will also allow you to carry thirteen million tons of cargo a yearwith positive effects on the economy. According to initial estimates, the construction of the railway line should create 13,000 direct full-time jobs and other 24 thousand indirect and when completed it should lead up to 16.2 billion euros of quantifiable benefits.
The cost of the railway instead is around 5.8 billion eurosbut the Baltic countries can count on a financing up to 85% through the tool Connecting Europe facility (Cef) of the European Union, which considers the implementation of Rail Baltica a priority. To date, theEuropean Union contributed to the project with 824 million euros. The new line will also serve to renew the electrical networks of the Baltic countries, still synchronized with that centrally controlled by Russia: this will eliminate the risk that Moscow could cut electricity and also block transport lines in Eastern Europe.
In the country there has been an increase in jamming of satellite navigation systems, which could be a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory
Alternative to Moscow
But the project also has an important symbolic valuebeyond the purely economic one e
infrastructural. The railway lines crossing the Baltic countries at the moment are still those made by the Soviet Union winding along an east-west rather than north-south axis, which explains the long journey times still existing between the capitals. The network was created according to these guidelines with the clear intention of favor i connections with Moscow and instead disincentivise those among neighboring countries, thereby strengthening the Soviet Union’s grip on the republics. With the RailBaltica the aim is therefore to tie even more Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to the rest of Europe, making traveling west is easier and instead favoring those to the east.
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