On Tuesday, June 25, the government approved amendments to the implementation regulations for broadband infrastructure development prepared by the Ministry of Transport (MoT) to ease the bureaucratic burden, create legal certainty and clarify the principles for receiving funding for infrastructure implementers. The changes to the regulations also provide for redistribution of the remaining funding from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to other digital transformation projects.
Amendments to the Cabinet of Ministers Implementation Regulations for the Development of the “Last Mile” infrastructure of broadband or very high-performance networks aim to reduce the administrative burden by stipulating that only in cases where this is required by regulatory enactments in the field of construction, the recipient of funding must be registered in the Construction Information System as a construction merchant in the relevant field of activity, and the performers of work must be certified specialists.
The changes to the regulations also provide for the reduction of the administrative burden in project supervision by stipulating that the inspection of the single-unit restrictions specified in the regulations may be carried out at the end of the execution of the construction contract.
In order to ensure the full use of the 16.5 million euros of RRF funding available in the Cabinet of Ministers regulations in accordance with the objective of the RRF plan, it is necessary to adjust the planned funding of the "last mile" investment, where a balance of 264,231 euros has been created, in accordance with the actually concluded contracts for the implementation of the projects. It is planned that the remaining funding will be directed to the implementation of the project "Development of digital services facilitating cross-border cooperation in the field of taxation".
In 2024, as a result of an open project selection, five contracts were concluded (one contract was concluded for each planning region) with electronic communications merchants - SIA "Balticom" (in the Vidzeme, Latgale, Zemgale and Riga planning regions) and SIA "Ostcom" (in the Kurzeme planning region), which are currently implementing projects that are planned to be completed by 30.06.2026. As a result, a very high-performance network with a download speed of at least 300 Mbit/s will be installed in 6,200 households, companies, hospitals, educational institutions.
