02-02-2024
Minister Marius Skuodis will meet the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure of the new Polish Government in Warsaw
On Monday, 5 February, Marius Skuodis, Minister of Transport and Communications, will visit Warsaw, Poland, where he will meet for the first time with Krzysztof Gawkowski, the new Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and Minister of Digital Affairs, and Dariusz Klimczak, the new Minister of Infrastructure.
At their meetings, the Lithuanian and Polish Ministers will discuss cooperation on the development of new freight corridors between the Baltic Sea ports and Ukraine and the implementation of the strategic infrastructure projects Via Baltica and Rail Baltica.
They will also discuss regional military mobility needs, further assistance to Ukraine, digitisation and other relevant issues on the regional agenda.
The new Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) already includes an additional North Sea-Baltic maritime corridor link, providing the shortest route between Lithuania, the Baltic States and Ukraine. At Lithuania’s proposal a European railway line to Klaipėda has been added to the new TEN-T network, and includes new military mobility links between Lithuania and Poland, namely, from Białystok via Augustów, Lazdijai and Alytus to Vilnius.
In Lithuania, the Via Baltica main road is undergoing reconstruction on a 40 km section from Marijampolė to the Lithuanian-Polish border. Last year, 12.5 km of the new motorway was built, and work is currently underway on the most technically challenging and longest section of almost 16 km near Marijampolė, which is expected to be completed this year. Work on the final, i.e. the fourth, 12 km section is also scheduled to start this year. The reconstruction of the entire Via Baltica project from Marijampolė to the Polish border is scheduled for completion in 2025.
The Lithuanian and Polish sections of the European-gauge railway Rail Baltica are scheduled to be connected in 2028.
Krzysztof Gawkowski and Dariusz Klimczak took office in December 2023. Krzysztof Gawkowski succeeds Janusz Cieszyński, former Minister of Digital Affairs, and Dariusz Klimczak succeeds Andrzej Adamczyk, who had served as Minister of Infrastructure of Poland since 2015, and Alvin Gajadhur, who had been Minister of Infrastructure since November 2023.