Malepszak told the Financial Times that completing the Rail Baltica project — estimated to cost €24 billion — by 2030 is impossible and that upgrading existing infrastructure would be much cheaper and faster.

"My current assumption is that the entire line will be completed in 2040, certainly not by 2030," Malepszak, a railway engineer, said in an interview.

Malepszak noted that politicians, including those in Brussels, should stop deceiving themselves about the 2030 completion deadline.

Marko Kivila, CEO of RB Rail, the company in charge of the project in Estonia, offered a more optimistic assessment. According to him, construction plans are "aligned with the 2030 objective." He added that the key factor is financing and that "any significant delays in funding would naturally require adjustments to the schedule."

The European Commission said that 2030 remains a legally binding deadline for Rail Baltica, including its section in Poland.

Malepszak, however, emphasized the project's already rapidly rising costs.

In 2017, participating countries estimated the total cost of the project at €5.8 billion, but a joint audit in 2024 quadrupled that figure to €23.8 billion.

He added that the final and most difficult section of the work in Poland — building a new line from the city of Ełk to the Lithuanian border — will begin no earlier than 2030. This 80-kilometer stretch is estimated to cost €4 billion.

Malepszak said Rail Baltica will not be completed on time due to a lack of funding, EU technical requirements and rising construction costs. He argued that Brussels should lower its ambitions and review the technical standards of the trans-European transport network (TEN-T), including the requirement that trains must run at at least 160 kilometers per hour on new high-speed lines. This obliges countries to build expensive new lines instead of upgrading existing tracks.

He noted that the EU does not have the budget to open all construction sites simultaneously.

"The current situation is not like in France or Spain in the 1980s or 1990s when they had a full budget to cover construction from point A to point B," he said.

The 1,230-kilometer project, funded by the Baltic states, Poland and the EU, aims to connect Warsaw with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, integrating them into the European railway network and ending reliance on Soviet-era Russian-gauge infrastructure.

The likely delay reflects growing tensions between the EU's infrastructure ambitions and budgetary and security realities, particularly in member states bordering Russia, the publication added.

Poland and the Baltic states have sharply increased defense spending since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago.

At a meeting in Warsaw in February, the transport ministers of France, Germany and Poland agreed to prioritize rail investments that would enable the rapid movement of troops and military equipment to NATO's eastern flank in the event of a Russian attack.

The EU's transport chief warned last year that Europe's roads, bridges and railways are not suitable for the rapid transport of tanks, troops and military equipment in the event of a possible war with Russia.

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