Specialists of "Ukrzaliznytsia" and the Ministry of Development of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure of Ukraine are finalizing the text of the draft law "On railway transport" in the part of inactive stations, necessary costs for the development of infrastructure and the involvement of regional centers. At the same time, the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Transport and Infrastructure is bringing certain provisions of the draft law into line with current EU directives.
As CTS writes, this became known at a meeting of the Committee on Logistics of the European Business Association with Yury Vaskov, Deputy Minister of Community Development, Territories and Infrastructure of Ukraine, and Yevhen Lyashchenko, Chairman of the Board of Ukrzaliznytsia.
Tentatively, the updated draft law should be provided to businesses and the public for perusal by the end of the year.
During the meeting, representatives of "Ukrzaliznytsia", in the context of the integration of Ukrainian railways into a single European network, reported on close cooperation with the SEF fund for the development of railway and road border crossings and TNT corridors. In particular, last year the European Commission announced the expansion of four TNT corridors. In the future, we are talking about the construction of 3.5 thousand km of Eurotrack on the territory of Ukraine, which will require more than 10 billion euros of investment.
It is noted that the representatives of "Ukrzaliznytsia" expect the CEF (Connecting Europe Facility) fund to act as a partner in the construction of such a network, which selects projects on a competitive basis and finances up to 50% in the form of grants. At the beginning of the year, Ukraine, together with neighboring countries, submitted joint applications for participation in financing the development of border infrastructure - in June, a decision was made to allocate 250 million euros in grants for the development of railway and road crossings on the western border of Ukraine. In September, Ukraine plans to submit applications for new infrastructure projects. Thanks to cooperation with European partners, Ukraine hopes for a gradual systematic renewal of the infrastructure.
Within the framework of the meeting, the Committee's companies also agreed with Vaskov on the preparation of business proposals for negotiations with neighboring European states on providing Ukrainian shippers with special conditions/tariffs for rail transportation and transshipment services in European ports.
We will remind you that such a decision was recently adopted by the Government of Moldova, which will provide a 25% discount on the transit of Ukrainian grain.