Sweden’s ambassador to Denmark, Charlotte Wrangberg, visited the Fehmarn project on Friday. Here she was given a tour of the element factory, the tunnel portal and the working port. It was the ambassador’s second trip to the construction site, and she was thoroughly impressed:
– I am so impressed. After all, we were here about two years ago, and there you could get a feel for what it was going to be like. But what we have seen today, I could never have imagined. That you have come so far, that you are keeping to the schedule and that all the sub-projects are just running. It is fantastic because it links our regions closer together. You just have to look at the map in there (at the exhibition centre, ed.), and you can see how the most northern part of Sweden is connected to the continent in a way that is absolutely fantastic, so I am deeply impressed, says Charlotte Wrangberg.
The Europaspåret “back in the fight”
What is the attitude in Sweden to Europaspåret’s proposal for a submerged tunnel between Landskrona and Copenhagen?
– It has been discussed in Sweden for several years that we need more connections to Denmark. What has been talked about the most has been the Helsingør-Helsingborg connection, and later we also discussed that we need a metro between Malmö and Copenhagen. Since then, Europaspåret has also been included as an alternative. But at Swedish government level, it has not been found to be a particularly interesting alternative. But now the government has said that the Trafikverket must investigate all three alternatives. So you can say that Europaspåret is in the fight again, says the ambassador.
Sweden will help pay
How much would you like to have an extra Øresund connection in Sweden? Do you want it enough to pay for it?
– We haven’t received the investigation from the Swedish Transport Administration yet, so it’s far too early to say. But it is clear that we are going to help pay. But I can’t sit here and say we’re going to pay everything. But we would very much like to have this connection. The starting point is that all connections between countries are good. The Øresund Bridge still has capacity, but we can see that we need more connections – not least for the sake of business. Now there has been an extra dimension to the whole thing, and it is the geopolitical situation and the security and defense issues that make us more vulnerable if we only have one connection to the continent. So from the Swedish side there is interest in us getting more connections across the Øresund, says Charlotte Wrangberg.
