Femern A/S has more than doubled the framework for legal assistance in a new four-year framework agreement on legal services. The agreement, which was awarded in June 2025, has an estimated value of 75 million kroner and a maximum of 100 million kroner.
According to Femern A/S, which is the state's client on the Femern connection, the agreement replaces a previous arrangement with an estimated value of 30 million kroner. It covers legal assistance in areas such as litigation and claims, procurement law, contract law, public law, and EU law, and is to be used both for ongoing advice and for cases where the company does not have legal expertise.
The framework agreement was tendered as a public tender and has been awarded to the law firm Poul Schmith I/S, better known as the Kammeradvokaten. The firm acts as the main advisor but can draw on other law firms or specialists in cases that require special legal expertise as needed. In the evaluation, price weighed 60 percent and organisation and staffing 40 percent.
Must handle major cases
According to the tender material, Femern simultaneously set high requirements for experience. Bidders had to be able to document at least one completed international arbitration case with a subject matter of at least 300 million kroner and experience in handling claims under the so-called FIDIC rules.
FIDIC is an international set of rules used in large construction projects and establishes how contractors and clients handle disagreements about time, payment, and responsibility. The requirement means that Femern only wants advisors with documented experience in the largest and most complex construction disputes.
The expanded legal framework comes as the Femern project faces several legal and technical challenges. The contractor consortium Femern Link Contractors has made claims of around 14.5 billion kroner against Femern A/S, and an international arbitration case concerning corona-related delays is underway.
The total construction cost for the Femern connection is set at over 55 billion kroner in 2015 prices, which corresponds to approximately 67 billion kroner.
The agreement came into effect in the summer of 2025 and runs for four years.
