New Northern Dimension partnership to facilitate cooperation in transport and logistics

The countries of the Northern Dimension region have signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the Northern Dimension Partnership for Transport and Logistics, NDPTL. The NIB Newsletter has asked Harro Pitkänen, Senior Director and Deputy Head of Lending at NIB, to comment on the NDPTL.

What is the purpose of the new partnership?

“The partnership will cover all modes of transport including road, rail, inland waterways, aviation, and maritime. It will focus on both infrastructure and non-infrastructure related bottlenecks with the view to improving transport connections and logistic processes between the countries in the region as well as to other regions.”

NIB has been actively involved in the creation of the NDPTL. How exactly?

“In 2007, NIB organised a broad expert workshop to discuss the idea of a new partnership, which contributed to the formation of a working group, set up in early 2008 by the Northern Dimension partners to assess the desirability of the scheme. NIB actively participated in this working group, which, among other issues, focused on the role of the partnership in identifying the bottlenecks and in defining priority projects to remove them. As part of the modalities agreed upon for the new partnership, NIB has been invited, along with the other international financial institutions (IFIs), to participate as an observer in the NDPTL.”

What would be on the partnership’s initial to-do list?

“An action plan to be prepared for the NDPTL will include a methodology for project identification and evaluation as well as a list of priority projects. It can be expected that the project list will include infrastructure investments in railroads, such as Rail Baltica, linking the Baltic countries to Central Europe, and the Barents Link between Northern Scandinavia and the northern regions of Russia. The list will probably also include airport enlargement projects, road building in all the Northern Dimension countries, and projects related to the ‘motorways of the seas’.”

The new partnership is being born under the aegis of the EU Northern Dimension policy. What’s the idea behind this format?

“The Northern Dimension provides a common framework for the promotion of dialogue and concrete cooperation in addressing challenges and opportunities in Northern Europe. The Northern Dimension spans a vast geographical area covering the northern EU Member states, Norway, Iceland, Northwest Russia, the Baltic Sea Region, the Barents Region and the Arctic. The USA and Canada are observers and the policy encourages expert-level cooperation with Belarus. The Northern Dimension covers a range of cooperation sectors and it contributes to increased coordination and synergy between various actors in the region. The two earlier Northern Dimension partnerships, the Environmental Partnership and the Partnership in Public Health and Social Well-being, are the most notable examples of concrete Northern Dimension cooperation. In addition to the NDPTL, a partnership on culture is being developed.”