Concise news summaries, often with the benefit of at least 24 hours of hindsight
“Multiple” investors in data centres and hydrogen-based fuels have shown interest in an energy park that would be placed adjacent to the onshore facilities for the Bornholm Energy Island project, according to a briefing delivered to the island council’s environment and commerce committee on 22 September. The park is intended for energy-intensive businesses and would draw power from the project’s offshore wind farms. Several of the potential investors have already contacted landowners in the area.
The council has yet to decide the park’s final boundaries, or whether to steer its development or leave investors to buy land and seek planning permission project by project. The briefing warns that the second approach could leave the area developed piecemeal. Proposals for a more co-ordinated approach will be put to councillors this autumn. Construction of the energy island’s onshore facilities is due to start in 2027, the same year as the delayed tender for the offshore wind farms that will supply it.
When they meet in Oslo tomorrow, the 87 delegates to the Nordic Council, a gathering of legislators from the region, will be asking each other if they are ready for the next crisis.
Strictly speaking, issues like foreign affairs, defence and security are not within the remit of the Nordic Council. The fact that its semi-annual session will again have the issue on its agenda anyway reflects two things: one, the pressing nature of the matter, and, two, the region’s growing reliance on a strategy known as “total defence”.
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Since the start of Moscow’s unprovoked war against Ukraine, the Nordic and Baltic countries, fearing they are next, have been pumping a lot of money into their militaries, with Denmark’s prime minister going so far as to order the country’s generals to go on a shopping spree.
Total defence makes that spending go a little further by giving the private sector and ordinary civilians a role to play during times of crisis—at a minimum, by making sure they can take care of themselves, so that the public sector and the military can concentrate on the most immediate threats. The thinking is that involving populations in emergency preparedness means they know what to do in the event something happens, and, not least, how to get themselves ready for it. Call it prepping, Nordic style.
FURTHER READING
} Nordic-Baltic Total Defence: Easier Said Than Done (Heinrich Böll Stiftung)
} Lithuanian opposition presents alternative defence plan, calling for total defence concept (LRT)
} Strengthening civil preparedness in the Baltic Sea Region (Diis)
} Focus on preparedness and total defence when Presidium of the Nordic Council met in Iceland (Nordic Council)
} “Finns understand that everyone has a role to play” (Helsinki Security Forum)
} Nordic Council Theme Session 2026 (Nordic Council)
} Total defence (Government offices of Sweden)
} A new era for Nordic security and preparedness (Nordic Council)
As far as building 100km bridges go, spanning the Kvarken, a narrowing of the northern Gulf of Bothnia, would be an easy task. Thanks to relatively shallow water, a generally firm seabed and an archipelago on the Finnish side, the challenge would lie less in getting the thing built than it would with coming up with the billions euros it would cost. (Estimates range from €5bn to €100bn.)
For that reason, when the idea has come up in the past, it has been easy for lawmakers in Sweden and in Finland to dismiss it as a costly white elephant that would have little benefit compared with the existing ferry service.
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These days, though, the calculus that drives the cost-benefit analyses of such projects has a new variable: security. Where the idea of a better-connected region has long been framed in economic terms, a bridge across the Kvarken is increasingly being discussed as a way for Finns to remain connected to Europe in the event Russian shenanigans render the Finnish-Swedish land border unusable.
For now, a Kvarken bridge remains well over the horizon: a report published last year by Finland’s transport ministry reckons that the earliest one could be open for traffic would be the early 2040s. Still, proponents are bullish: the same report found a bridge was technically feasible and laid the foundation for an assessment of its economic benefits. A journey of a hundred kilometres begins with a single report.
FURTHER READING
} Fixed link across the Kvarken discussed in the Swedish Parliament (Kvarkenrådet)
} The €30-billion bid to link Finland to the wider EU (The Parliament)
} Finland wants to build a bridge across the Baltic Sea to Sweden for better connections to Europe (Euronews)
} Huge bridge between Sweden and Finland back on the drawing board (Ingeniøren)
} Kvarken Fixed Connection Feasibility Study (Väylävirasto)
A temporary reduction in the value-added tax on food items takes effect in Sweden today. As part of an 80 billion kronor (€7.35 billion) package passed in September aimed at supporting households and the economy, particularly in response to rising food prices and inflation, Swedes will pay 6% on retail food items until the end of 2027. (To the ire of restaurateurs, the VAT on prepared foods eaten on premises will remain at 12%.)
For the average family, the savings are expected to add up to 6,500 kronor (€594) per year, and the hope among the lawmakers who agreed on the reduction is that voters will remember where the money came from when they go to the polls later this year. But with an annual median income in the neighbourhood of 400,000 kronor, Swedes will be more concerned that the reduction will be paid for by reduced spending on other programmes.
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Rising fuel prices stemming from the closing of the Strait of Hormuz also threaten eat up any savings at the supermarket. But there is a tax cut for that too: starting on 1 May, the government will reduce fuel duties to the EU minimum, in effect, extending until September a reduction that has been in place since 2022.
Note: This article originally incorrectly stated that all prepared foods will continue be assessed a 12% VAT. Sorry.
FURTHER READING
} Sweden to temporarily halve food VAT in election-year budget (Reuters)
} Sweden: VAT for food is lowered (Nordea)
} Sweden’s gasoline tax cuts make driving cheaper — but at what cost? (Stockholm School of Economics)
} Sweden’s government to cut taxes on petrol and diesel (Svergies Radio)
Moscow has resumed shipments of crude oil from two Baltic Sea ports near St Petersburg after a drone attack damaged a loading facility at Primorsk on Sunday. A second facility, at Ust-Luga, was closed as a precaution but re-opened after authorities lifted an attack alert. The two ports are major outlets for Russian oil, and the attack was a part of Ukraine’s strategy of targeting oil refineries in order to disrupt Moscow’s war economy.
Countries of the Baltic Sea region would like to see traffic to and from Primorsk and Ust-Luga stopped as well—for the added reason that the 1,000 or so ships that Russia uses to transport the oil and other banned items are not seaworthy, and they fear they will cause an accident. They are also suspected of being used by Moscow to sabotage undersea infrastructure.
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But where Ukraine has the option of sending drones to accomplish its goals, Baltic Sea countries have had to tread more carefully for fear of provoking the Kremlin. That meant only stepping in when vessels posed an imminent danger, or when they were suspected of causing damage.
Now, though, their coast guards are becoming increasingly proactive. The Swedish coast guard, for example, boarded two vessels in a single week earlier this month. In one of the incidents, the captain was detained for “violating maritime code and the ship safety act, as well as the use of a forged document”. Those are hardly fighting words—but that is precisely the point.