Croatia plans to invest about 33 billion kuna until 2030 in upgrading the rail sector, an official of the transport and infrastructure ministry said at a panel discussion held in in the northern Croatian town of Cakovec on Thursday.

The event was organised in that northern Croatian city to mark 2021, designated as the “European Year of Rail” at the European Commission’s proposal to support the delivery of its European Green Deal objectives for transport.

Also this year, Croatia is celebrating the 161st anniversary of its first railway on the route from the Slovenian town of Pragersko via the Croatian towns of Cakovec and Kotoriba to the Hungarian town of Nagykanizsa.

Addressing the panel discussion, Medjimurje County Prefect Matija Posavec said that a watershed in the development of the north of Croatia would be the construction of a high-speed rail along the Kotoriba-Cakovec-Varazdin-Zapresic-Zagreb route.

A member of the board of the Croatian Rail Infrastructure (HZ Infrastruktura) company, Darko Barisic, announced the modernisation of the railway infrastructure in Medjimurje in the next few years to make it possible for trains to travel at a speed of 100 kilometres per hour.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)