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On November 18, the General Court of the EU rejected Lietuvos Geležinkeliai’s lawsuit, in which the company requested the annulment of the European Commission’s decision to allocate LTL 27.873 million to it. However, taking into account the seriousness and duration of the infringement, it reduced it to 20,069 million euros. euros.
“We are still evaluating the court’s arguments. The decision will reduce the negative impact on the company of the decision of the previous administration in 2008 to dismantle this important stretch. The” Lietuvos geležinkeliai “team did everything in our will : We made efforts to reduce the fine, as well as restored this section, which has been running with regular freight trains since the beginning of this year, “said Mantas Bartuška, General Director of Lietuvos Geležinkeliai, in a comment to BNS. .
“It is also very important that the solution to this problem has led to the restoration of good relations with our partners,” he added.
According to the General Court of the EU, the Lithuanian Railways could not prove that the condition of the Rengė section was so poor that it was justified to dismantle it completely immediately.
“By not needing funding to start reconstruction works and not following the usual preparatory stages for reconstruction works, Lietuvos Geležinkeliai had no reason to urgently dismantle the railway in question. The European Commission was not mistaken in finding that the dismantling of the railway even before the start of the renovation works was very unusual behavior in the railway sector, “the General Court of the EU said in a statement.
The EC imposed a fine on the Lithuanian railways in early October 2017. Despite the legal proceedings initiated, Lietuvos Geležinkeliai paid a fine in January 2018, for which, after the court reduced it, 7,804 million LTL . Euros will be returned to the company.
In 2018, Lietuvos Geležinkeliai made the decision to rebuild the Rengė section. Reconstruction of the 19-kilometer stretch was completed in late December 2019, at a cost of approximately $ 10 million. The works were carried out by the Estonian capital railway construction company Vitras-S.
At the beginning of this year, the first freight trains returned to running on the Rengė section. Currently, there are between 8 and 10 trains a week going to Latvia.
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