A team made up of Eiffage, Ferrovial subsidiary Budimex and Rizzani de Eccher has won a civil engineering contract to construct a 230km stretch of the Rail Baltica high-speed line in Latvia.

Eiffage Génie Civil is the lead contractor and 50% shareholder in the consortium.

The €3.7bn deal will include 175 engineering structures and 11 animal crossings. Work will start this year.

The job was awarded by Eiropas Dzelzcela Linijas on behalf of two Latvian state agencies. Eighty-five per cent of the funding will come from the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility and the remainder from the government of Latvia. Last year, Connecting Europe awarded an additional €928m to the project.

Rail Baltica is an 870km link intended to integrate the Baltic States into the European rail network by creating a connection between Tallinn and Warsaw. The railway will accommodate passenger trains travelling up to 249km/h and freight trains at 120km/h.

In 2020, the European Court of Auditors warned that it was likely to complete in 2030 rather than the official deadline of 2026, and that its cost would be €7bn instead of €5bn. Furthermore, doubts were cast over the likely economic value of the completed asset.