Europe, explained.

Construction of the Fehmarn Belt tunnel between Denmark and Germany in Rodbyhavn, southern Denmark (Ida Marie Odgaard via AFP/Getty Images)

Planned to be opened in 2029, the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link between Denmark and Germany will be the world’s longest dual road and rail tunnel (Ida Marie Odgaard via AFP/Getty Images)

Tunnels and trains: The megaprojects reshaping Europe’s economy

Efficiency comes at a cost, however.

Grant Wyeth

2 December 20244 min read

Hamburg is Europe’s third largest container port. While it lags behind Rotterdam and Antwerp in terms of volume, it is the continent’s largest rail port. If you want to get heavy volumes of cargo from or onto the European rail network quickly and efficiently, then Hamburg is your port.

Due to the European Union’s ambitious Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) plan, the port’s significance is expected to increase – with three of the plan’s nine transport corridors intersecting with the city. The enhancement of these corridors is particularly important for Hamburg’s connection north into Scandinavia.

I was in Hamburg because I wanted to take a train journey that will soon be obsolete. Currently to get to Copenhagen from Hamburg the train heads straight north up through Schleswig-Holstein, across the border into Jutland before taking a hard 90º turn onto the island of Funen and then into Zealand, where the Danish capital is based. The trip takes four hours and 40 minutes.

How we get from A to B is driven by powerful forces of geoeconomics.

Yet by the end of the decade this will change. Currently under construction is a new dual rail and road tunnel underneath the Fehmarn Belt between Germany and Denmark – a strait of 18 kilometres in width. Once complete, this will create a new direct diagonal route between Hamburg and Copenhagen. Shaving just over two hours off the train time.

It’s a reminder that the routes we take are not constructed with individual travellers in mind. How we get from A to B is instead driven by powerful forces of geoeconomics. While commerce forms around existing routes, commerce also demands greater efficiency – and states are heavily incentivised to respond to these demands.

While this is an advantage for the movement of cargo to and from Hamburg – and for those rail passengers wanting to see less of the scenic countryside of northern Germany and Denmark – who this is mostly an advantage to is neither the Germans nor the Danes. It’s the Swedes.

To fully understand this advantage, we need to return to the 1990s, when Sweden and Denmark agreed to build the 16 kilometre road and rail Øresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö. Opened in 2000, this bridge delivered Sweden the extraordinary benefit of no longer being reliant on ships to move cargo between itself and the European continent. It also provided the premise for the Nordic noir crime drama, The Bridge.

However, just being able to get freight and people across the bridge and into the continental rail network wasn’t enough for the Swedes – they wanted greater efficiency. This is because Germany is both Sweden’s largest export market, and the largest origin country for Sweden’s imports. Alongside this, just over 10 per cent of Sweden’s exports to other global markets are transhipped in Hamburg – making a more direct rail connection into the port a vital strategic interest.

Due to this, the Swedes began to push their Danish cousins on the idea of a new tunnel between Denmark and Germany. The Danes, realising there’s good money to be made as a middleman, decided to take full responsibility for the ownership and financing of the tunnel. Planned to be opened in 2029, the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link will be the world’s longest dual road and rail tunnel, with the capacity for up to 70 freight and 38 passenger trains a day

What makes the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link unique, is that rather than boring under the seabed, instead the tunnel is being prefabricated onshore in 89 separate casts that will be dropped into the sea and then sealed together. It is the biggest project ever to be constructed in such a manner.

The first tunnel element at the Fehmarn Belt tunnel construction site at Roedbyhavn in June 2024 (Photo by Ingrid Riis via AFP/Getty Images)

The Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link is one of several megaprojects that Europe is undertaking under the TEN-T plan. The Baltic states are being brought into the European rail network via the high speed Rail Baltica project; the Brenner Base Tunnel is boring its way through the Alps to create a more efficient route between Austria and Italy; and an even larger tunnel through the Alps is also under construction to connect the high speed rail networks of Italy and France.

Central to the TEN-T plan is not simply the ability to move larger volumes of cargo and people around Europe, it is also an attempt to shift the primary mode of movement away from roads and towards rail. To make European commerce far less carbon intensive.

This prioritising of rail will be another advantage for Hamburg. When both the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link and the Brenner Base Tunnel are completed the city will consolidate its status as the central node of the Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor. Which forms the vertical axis of the TEN-T network – running from Norway’s Arctic fjords down to the beaches of southern Italy.

While the scale of the TEN-T plan may be good for Europe’s transport efficiency – and the bottom line of companies seeking to access ports such as Hamburg – the romance of European train travel may be weakened. Grand scale tunnels may be great feats of engineering and human ingenuity, but nature’s genius and Europe’s historical splendour are harder to witness at a meandering pace when you are instead speeding through a concrete tube.

About the author

Grant Wyeth

Grant Wyeth is a writer and foreign affairs analyst. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Australian India Institute and columnist for The Diplomat.

Topics

Europe