Ladies and gentleman, colleagues,

The history of Latvia’s railways goes back a century and a half and began with railways operating on a five-foot gauge, which continues to this day. Today we call it 1,520 (one thousand five hundred and twenty) in millimetres. The successes of our country’s rail transport and the constant growth in the volume of freight transport have been achieved on this gauge, which unites all of us.

The modern world is getting smaller. There is increasingly active cooperation between the 1,520 (one thousand five hundred and twenty) millimetre gauge railway systems and the European 1,435 (one thousand four hundred and thirty-five) millimetre gauge railway system. Latvia has enormous experience of working in these two systems, and experience of their coexistence and interaction.

It is interesting to note the fact that one of the first Soviet diesel locomotives, created in Germany by Professor Yuri Lomonosov, travelled to Russia via Latvia, where it was converted from the European gauge to the broad gauge.
At present the return of the European gauge to Latvia is only being planned, but the issues of interaction are still important for us. The point is that the existence of the two railway systems has turned a purely mathematical difference in gauges into a difference in a whole range of engineering solutions, different legal and regulatory frameworks, and different traditions.
This has brought Latvia, as a European Union country, into a conflict between the desire of the European Union to unify rail transport and the unification that effectively exists between us, which is also the basis of such successful transport cooperation.
We have recently achieved a lot to overcome these discrepancies. This includes a number of exceptions in European directives and active cooperation between the European Railway Agency and the Organisation for Cooperation of Railways. At present we are awaiting the conclusion of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Organisation for Cooperation of Railways and the European Commission. All this is helping us to overcome the historically rooted contradictions which directly affect us.

We are also following with interest examples of cooperation aimed at more effective functioning of rail transport in the Eurasian space. This includes the cooperation between the Organisation for Cooperation of Railways and OTIF, and the CIM-SMGS joint waybill, and also the UNECE initiative to create a unified Eurasian transport law.

Unfortunately in a number of cases these actions have been inadequately coordinated. This is happening precisely because very active work has recently been underway. And this underlines the importance of the present forum, which will enable us to exchange opinions on issues concerning cooperation between the two railway systems.