The Croatian railway system "should be restructured and upgraded to the European level by 2030," with the value of related projects estimated at €5.4 billion, state agency Hina reported on Monday, citing conclusions of a conference organized by the Hanza Media publishing company in Zagreb.

Addressing the event, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Oleg Butkovic said that current investments in the transport sector totalled just above 25 billion kuna, with invetsments in the railway sector accounting for about 11 billion kuna.

“As a sector the railway is in a neglected state and it is a major challenge for the government to build, modernise and restructure it… and raise it to the European level by 2030,” Butkovic said, noting that the National Recovery and Resilience Plan envisaged 670 million kuna for the railways and pointing in that regard also to the Multiannual Financial Framework.

€5.4 billion to be invested in railways until 2030

HZ Infrastruktura railway maintenance company CEO Ivan Krsic said that projects to build and modernize the railway infrastructure in the period until 2030 amounted to €5.4 billion, while the length of renovated and modernized railways would be 780 kilometres or 30 percent of the total network, to be mostly co-financed by the EU with 85 percent of the necessary funding.

Most of the investments refer to projects along two transport corridors – RH1, running from the border with Slovenia to the border with Serbia, and RH2 – stretching from the northern Adriatic port city of Rijeka to the border with Hungary.

Three projects have been completed so far along Corridor RH1 and four more sections are in different stages of preparation or implementation.

One of the active projects along Corridor RH2 is the Dugo Selo-Krizevci railway section, which must be completed by 2023, while reconstruction work on several other sections is expected to start soon.

In addition to the two corridors, 12 more projects are planned on the rest of the railway network, Krsic said.