Until 4 December 2025, the plan was for the first tunnel element on the Femern construction to be lowered these days.
This is evident from an email exchange between the French embassy and the Ministry of Transport. The embassy's economic advisor, Matthieu Garrigue-Guyonnaud, writes to the Ministry of Transport's department head, Flemming Schiller, that he hopes the next meeting can take place at the construction site, so they can witness “the immersion of the first element, next February”.
The email is part of a correspondence where the French ambassador requests a meeting with the transport minister, Thomas Danielsen. The background is problems for the French contractor Vinci, which is the largest company in the consortium behind the tunnel construction. The embassy writes that the poor cooperation with Sund & Bælt is already affecting the work.
The lowering of the first tunnel element is central to the entire construction. It is the starting point for the most complex and crucial phase of the entire project and should have happened two years ago. This is where the 217-metre-long and over 70,000-ton heavy concrete elements must be lowered into the excavated trench on the seabed and connected to form the actual tunnel.
A construction that depends on special vessels
The lowering can only be carried out with specially built vessels. For the Femern project, two large pontoons, Ivy 1 and Ivy 2, have been constructed to transport and hold the tunnel elements while they are lowered into place with great precision.
The vessels are built specifically for the project and cannot be replaced by ordinary ships. They are therefore a prerequisite for the immersion to take place at all.
But the Ivy vessels have had problems obtaining the necessary approvals since they were delivered in the autumn of 2024. This is also why the email exchange revolves around when the immersion can begin. But a few weeks after the February expectation in the thread, a message comes that changes the premise.
"Just look up"
A few weeks after the email about the February plan, a new message arrives.
In an email to Flemming Schiller, Matthieu Garrigue-Guyonnaud writes that the maritime authorities on 4 December have revoked the vessel's temporary sailing certificate and detained it.
He refers to the process as a new chapter in what he calls the “pontoon boat saga” and writes that the reasons given are said to be minor, but that he does not know the details himself.
The email exchange also shows how close the coordination between the Ministry of Transport and the French embassy has been. Garrigue-Guyonnaud asks in the email whether the ministry has the same information and whether the ministry knows how the situation can be resolved. Schiller then forwards the information internally to officials in the Ministry of Transport's Road and Bridge Office with the message “Just look up about this”, which leaves the impression that the ministry at that time was not aware of the information and first had to have it investigated.
The consequence is, however, clear. When a vessel loses its temporary certificate and is detained by the authorities, it cannot be used for the operation it is built for.
Thus, the basis for an immersion in February is no longer valid.
Conflicts beneath the surface
The situation with the vessel coincides with a period where the Femern project is already marked by growing disagreements.
The client Sund & Bælt and the main contractor Femern Link Contractors are in conflict over both the schedule, the quality of the tunnel trench, and the responsibility for delays in the construction. Femern Link Contractors have made a claim of 14.5 billion kroner, and at the same time, there is an ongoing international arbitration case regarding delays due to corona.
January 21th it was announced that the first immersion will take place during the spring of 2026.
