Fehmarn rail delay clouds a critical northern corridor

The opening of the railway through the Fehmarn Belt tunnel has been postponed indefinitely.

The move comes after Sund & Bælt, the state-owned company responsible for Denmark’s fixed links, acknowledged further delays to road traffic, pushing the expected opening from 2029 to 2032.

More significant, however, is that Sund & Bælt is no longer able to say when the EU-critical rail connection will open. The company said on Sunday that it would now work towards opening the Fehmarn Belt tunnel in two phases.

Under the revised plan, the road connection will open first. The railway will follow at a later stage, once the necessary infrastructure on the German side is ready, said Mikkel Hemmingsen, chief executive of Sund & Bælt.

Construction work on the Danish side is currently about two years behind schedule, owing to challenges involving the specialised vessel used to immerse the tunnel elements.

With Sweden and Finland now members of Nato, the ability to move heavy equipment, including armoured vehicles and bulk supplies, into Sweden and onwards to Norway by rail is becoming increasingly central to alliance planning in northern Europe.

In a LinkedIn post, Hemmingsen said Denmark knowingly signed the contracts for the Fehmarn project in 2015 before German regulatory approval had been secured. 

However, he argued that the conditions set out in the later German approval have created problems. These include strict limits on underwater noise, as well as restrictions on where and when work may be carried out in German waters.

- These constraints make it difficult to recover lost time and may result in further delays to the project, he wrote.

Sund & Bælt is expected to present a revised timetable for the project at a later date.