Estonia, Legislation, Port, Tourism, Transport

The ministry now starts qualifying and evaluating the bid submitted by Väinamere Liinid.

The starting time for the next period of the ferry lines operator contract is October 1, 2016 and the contract duration is 10 years. If the bid that was submitted does not qualify, the Ministry will start negotiations with all potential operators.

When that happens, the state-owned port of Tallinn has a possibility; it could not participate in the current procurement, despite being instructed to do so, because the company does not currently have full certainly that they can acquire the necessary ships by deadline. Port of Tallinn's ship procurement failed and currently direct negotiations are under way with ship builders and owners.

The public transport contract with Väinamere Liinid OÜ for operating the mainland-islands connections was concluded in 2006 and is valid till September 30, 2016. Saaremaa Laevakompanii, which owns Väinamere Liinid, has serviced the Saaremaa and Hiiumaa routes for decades with the help of state subsidies and uses several specially built ships for the routes.