The Baltic Sea Motorway - Recent Development and Outlook for the Future

Abstract

The Council of the European Union adopted a political agreement in the summer of 2004 on a common position concerning the new TEN Guidelines proposed by the Commission. These Guidelines introduced the concept of the Motorways of the Sea. Currently, there are four sea motorways in Europe, one of which is the Baltic Sea Motorway. The countries in the northern Baltic Sea area, such as Finland, are faced with long transport distance to Central Europe and seasonal ice coverage of the Baltic Sea. The concept of the Baltic Sea Motorway including land transport feeder connections provides an efficient maritime link and transport chain for the Baltic countries, promotes the internal cohesion of the Baltic Sea region to the core areas of the European Community and reduces high transport costs. The sea motorways have a priority project status just like the land transport connections of particular importance for the European Union. According to the TEN-Guidelines, there are two types of Sea Motorway projects. Horizontal projects, in which the benefits are not only allocated to particular ports (for example icebreaking, the Baltic information systems etc.) and port-to-port -projects, which aim at providing opportunities for long multimodal transport chains between member countries.