When co‐operation divides: Öresund, the Channel tunnel and the new politics of European transport

Abstract

Recent policy‐making in European transport has been complicated by cross‐pressures created by Single Market‐led industry rationalization, the vulnerability of the transport sector to politicization, and the European Union's growing involvement via its ambitious Trans‐European Networks (TENs) initiative. This article examines the problems and issues arising in international transport infrastructure‐building via a comparative policy analysis of two of Europe's most ambitious projects: the Channel Tunnel and the planned Scandinavian bridge‐tunnel across the Oresund. Despite similarities as fixed‐links across international water barriers, the two projects show considerable variance, not only in their design features and stages of completion, but also in the nature of the policy networks and communities, the key issues that have arisen, and the strategies chosen to address them. Both projects suffered at times from the overt intrusion of politics, which may be indicative of a widening scope for politicization of transport issues at the European level, and could have implications for hopes of forging a new European partnership, based on neo‐corporatist principles, via the TENs initiative.

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