Фото: Lutz Wernitz, unsplash.com
Latvian Railways has increased fees for grain transit from Belarus and Russia by just 25%, although Latvia’s parliament, the Saeima, had called for a threefold increase. LSM reports.
The law aimed at restricting transit did not contain a specific provision requiring a 300% increase. Instead, this remained a government appeal to LatRailNet, a subsidiary of Latvian Railways. It turned out that such an increase was not possible.
“When determining infrastructure charges, we of course carefully considered the prime minister’s call to increase them by 300%. On the other hand, we operate within the legal framework of the European Union,” LatRailNet head Justina Hudenko explained.
According to her, EU legislation requires infrastructure usage charges to be set based on the costs of maintaining it. As a result, tariffs were increased by an average of 25%. It was also noted that a threefold increase would have been economically unsustainable and would have led to a significant reduction or complete cessation of freight traffic, while also exposing Latvia to the risk of EU infringement proceedings.
According to the publication, grain transit costs for shippers range from €25 to €30 per tonne. The tariff increase did not raise these costs by even one euro per tonne.
According to customs data from the State Revenue Service (SRS), 888,000 tonnes of Russian and Belarusian grain had been transported through Latvia by October 6. This is 36.3% more than in all of 2025, when the volume totalled 652,000 tonnes.