COPENHAGEN- Who can get excited about a bridge? But if it were just a bridge it would have been built a long time ago. This bridge that links northern Europe with the Scandinavian land mass is a political statement, almost as powerful, if not quite, as the creation of the Euro, the single currency, to the south. Indeed, a Scandinavian decision to accede to membership of the Euro should by rights follow as a logical next step. That both Denmark, which votes on the issue next month and Sweden, the two mother countries of the bridge, have serious reservations about joining the Euro is, in modern dress, the debate they had about building the bridge, a debate that consumed over a century of argument and discussion.
But the bridge is now there, opened last month, a graceful object crossing 17 kilometers of the sound that adjoins the Baltic sea. The Danish referendum to be held many of on September 28 is said by commentators here to hang in the balance. Although the government, most of business, many of the unions and much of the media are all for it, a good chunk of Danish public opinion hangs back- and just as it did over the bridge- worries that tiny Denmark with all its virtues of a sound economy and a benign welfare state, not to mention a precious self-identity, will get swallowed up by German truck traffic racing through to the Scandinavian north and by Brussels-based federalists who are out to subsume this tiny country into some Franco-German dominated political union where their concerns and priorities will be simply out voted and ignored.
Yet, with the emerging Baltic behind it and Europe in front of it, it will be a brave Dane (and later a Swede) who will decide not to vote yes. Indeed, it is Denmark, Sweden and Finland who are the instigators of the so-called “Baltic buzz” that is resurrecting the medieval Hanseatic league, that is linking in one great economic basin, Estonia. Latvia, Lithuania, the St Petersburg region of Russia, northern Poland, northern Germany with their own booming economies. In sum it is responsible for a hefty 15% of world trade. Yet, the very fact that the outlet for its energies is the great European market place to the south combined with the fact that Finland and Germany are already Euro-economies (and Poland and the ex-Soviet Baltic states wish to be) means that Denmark and Sweden cannot afford not to be part of it. “Now at last we’ve built that damned bridge” said one Swedish professor to me “we have to cross it. And that means joining the Euro” .
The Hanseatic League was founded in the twelfth century to aid trade in the Baltic area. At its height it linked 160 cities and developed a sophisticated commercial network that included a common boat, advanced navigational aids and even a quasi parliament to discuss inter-league problems. Under its protection the members cities prospered and even today the identity and myth of Hansa days live on. What is evolving today seems to many to be a natural successor.
It is Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway which have set the pace. Immediately the Soviet Union withdrew from the Baltic states, Finland became the big brother to Estonia, Sweden to Latvia and Denmark and Norway to Lithuania. Estonia is only 80 kilometers from Finland and it is not surprising that they have now become each other’s principal trading partners and are major tourist destinations for both peoples. The Finns have helped train the Estonian police and military and are training the country’s bureaucracy so that it can cope with the country’s planned membership of the European Union. All of the Scandinavian countries are environmentally conscious and have worked furiously with both the Baltic states and Russia to attempt to clean up the Baltic which in some parts had become nothing more than a great sewer.
It is the Swedish-Danish bridge, however, that is providing the main charge to the Baltic engine. In a stroke it has created a metropolitan area of three million people, linking the cultured and sophisticated metropolis of Copenhagen with the old Swedish industrial town of Malmoe and, 12 kilometers inland, the ancient university- and now ultra high-tech town of Lund, founding home of Framfab, Boo.com and other new age companies. It is as large a trade and marketing centre as Amsterdam or Berlin. It is growing at a clipping rate and is set to attract the brightest of Europe’s young people with its easy facility for English, its good air and rail links, relatively cheap housing and beautiful, uncommercialized countryside and beaches within a half hour’s reach.
To an outsider it seems self-evident which way the Danes and the Swedes must vote in their referenda. Yet on the ground it is not so clear. The sceptical minority could still pull off a no to the Euro, a no that will not only vibrate across the bridge but which will be heard in Britain too, perhaps putting the nail in for Prime Minister Tony Blair as he attempts to line up his voters to say yes. The Danish opponents of the Euro are playing old tunes- it will weaken Denmark’s welfare state, it will lead to the abolition of the monarchy and, more seriously, it is a huge step towards political union. If they win they will have turned Denmark’s and probably Sweden’s back on a great historical leap forward. Don’t they know if they want to retain Denmark as a peaceful and civilized corner of Europe they have to be integrationists, not recluses? Europe can only keep at bay the dogs of war that tore it asunder twice in the last century if all its parts work intimately with each other. As the bridge was more than a bridge, the Euro is more than a currency.
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
