Overview
- Regional leaders, who met Wednesday with Lelylijn envoy Klaas Knot, created a working group to turn his financing advice into a concrete regional plan.
- The group will prepare a dedicated savings fund based on the state reserving €400 million a year for 25 years to keep money ring‑fenced for the project.
- Provinces and municipalities will test if they can jointly set aside up to €40 million a year and will seek roughly 10% of costs from other financiers such as businesses and the EU.
- Officials say a formal MIRT exploration, the Dutch process that scopes major infrastructure, can begin once about 75% of funding is in view, and Knot briefs the House on May 13.
- The line is priced at about €14–14.5 billion, earlier national earmarks of roughly €3.4 billion were largely shifted to the Nedersaksenlijn, and the current cabinet left the project out of its pact.