Impressions from the exhibition stand of the Scandria Alliance at the 2024 Connecting Europe Days in Brussels

Connecting Europe Days in Brussels – it’s a wrap

The Scandria Alliance was represented with a stand at Europe’s mobility flagship event in Brussels on 2-5 April 2024

The Connecting Europe Days 2024 gathered more than 3,200 delegates from 80 countries – politicians, financial institutions, industry representatives, transport stakeholders and the European Commission – to discuss concrete measures and exchange good practices on creating a sustainable, smart and resilient, transport and mobility network in Europe. Taking stock of the ambitious goals set out in the EU Green Deal and the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, the event focus was on four main topics:

  • the nine new ‘European Transport Corridors’ of the trans-European transport network (TEN-T),
  • the resilience of the European transport network to the changing climate,
  • connectivity of our transport network with neighbouring third countries and its preparedness for external threats,
  • the future of funding and financing opportunities for transport infrastructure projects.

 

The future of the Trans-European Transport Network

Key take aways from the 2024 Connecting Europe Days include:

  1. European transport policy needs to address many areas, including:
    • increased focus on decarbonisation of all transport modes,
    • resilience of the transport system and military mobility,
    • acceleration of the urban nodes concept, covering now 431 instead of 88 urban nodes,
    • extension of the European Corridors to the North and to the East.
  2. There is a need to continue and strengthen the Connecting Europe Facilty (CEF) and its budget in the next multiannual financial framework.
  3. There is a need to strengthen governance of European Transport Policy at all levels.

This will require a high level of collaboration, a role that can be taken by collaborative networks such as the Scandria Alliance to both translate European transport policy to the different stakeholders and to coordinate their activities on the ground.

During the official sessions, the Scandria Alliance and their members got acknowledged several times as collaboration platform dealing with important issues, such a decarbonsation of transport, cross-border rail connectivity, multimodal transport and urban nodes.

The Connecting Europe Days are organised by the European Commission together with the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU.

Visit the Connecting Europe Days’ website for more information.

Scandria®Alliance stand well attended

The Scandria®Alliance hosted a stand in the Connecting Europe Days’ exhibition area, which was well attended and a popular place for meetings between our member cities and regions and other stakeholders. There was a high level of interest in our activities from other regions but also representatives of the European Commission.

There were a number of projects presented at our stand: the West Railway in Finland, the Hamburg rail node, the i2030 rail infrastructure project in Berlin-Brandenburg, the rail link Oslo-Sthlm 2.55, the Green Jutland Corridor, the projects Blue Supply Chains and Green Supply Chains run by Port of Hamburg Marketing,  projects MoLo Hubs and Connected River run by the Logistics Initiative Hamburg and cross-border collaboration in the Kvarken Region.

During the Connecting Europe Days, Scandria Alliance interviewed Anne Strømøy, County Mayor of Vestfold County and Linda Carolina Ehnmark about the Green Jutland Corridor and Pekka Ottavainen, Managing Director of Länsirata Oy (West Railway Ltd.) about their ambitions and plans.

Anne Strømøy, County Mayor of Vestfold County stressed that the revised TEN-T regulation enables partners from Norway and Denmark to develop sustainable, multimodal freight transport in the Green Jutland Corridor. She underlined that the recent establishment of a freight train service between the ferry port of Hirtshals and Duisburg operated by DB Cargo should get reflected at the Norwegian side.

Pekka Ottavainen, Managing Director of West Railway Ltd. explained that planning of the railway line has been concluded and works worth 600 million EUR have been started. Until the early 2030-ies, the line would connect whole southern Finland and boost development in that area. The travel times between Helsinki and Turku would get reduced by about 30 minutes.

 

Connecting Europe DaysEventsTEN-T