The Dutch city of Maastricht – on the border with Belgium – will take Flanders to court over its failure to build a tram link from Maastricht to the Belgian city of Hasselt.
The Dutch authorities invested €19.6 million into the project, but the Flemish Government is refusing to pay the sum back.
The city authorities in Maastricht and the Dutch province of Limburg jointly invested nearly €20 million in the long-promised tram link to Hasselt, but the Flemish Region decided to scrap the project last year.
In a letter from the Mayor of Maastricht Wim Hillenaar to the city council, he stated that while Flanders is contractually obliged to repay the money invested by the Netherlands in the tram line, the region has failed to do so.
The plans for a tram connecting Maastricht and Hasselt date back nearly two decades, to 2004. The fast link between the two cities – now connected by two bus lines that each take about an hour and a half – never got off the ground due to a range of problems.
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In Maastricht, for instance, the tracks could not be extended to the railway station because a bridge in the city could not support the tram's weight. Early last year, Hasselt announced that it was abandoning the project, partly because of the €300 million cost to the Belgians and in May 2022, Flanders cancelled the project.
Since then, Flanders has reimbursed Maastricht a sum of €3 million to be paid as compensation for having to shorten part of the line, but not the remaining €19.6 million. According to the Belga News Agency, attempts to resolve the dispute amicably have so far been unsuccessful.
On Tuesday evening, the office of Flemish Mobility Minister Lydia Peeters said that Flanders had not yet received word of any new developments. "We are waiting for the official communication and will then consider further steps."
