COPENHAGEN, June 29, 2007 (LPAC)–The good news is that Danish Transportation Minister Flemming Hansen and his German colleague Wolfgang Tiefensee signed an agreement today in Berlin to build a 19 km. bridge between the two countries across the Fehmarn Belt in the Baltic Sea, which the Schiller Institute has been campaigning for. Minister Hansen called it "an historic day."

The bad news is that the German government refused to make it a joint bridge, and Minister Tiefensee called the project "a totally Danish bridge." This means that the Danish government will finance, build, run, and collect the tolls for the bridge, whereas the German government will only build the German road to the bridge.

The Danish state will use the same financing model as for the completed Great Belt and Oeresund bridges – a state company will borrow money at cheap interest rates, backed up by state guarantees covering about 6 billion dollars, to be repaid by bridge tolls. The German government, which will only be responsible for about 1 billion dollars for the road works, refused to participate in taking financial responsibility for any part of the bridge. Danish Transportation Minister Flemming Hansen said that this was the best agreement he could get given the political conditions.

The building of the bridge will first begin in 2011, and is projected be completed in 2018.

The Schiller Institute in Denmark has issued three 50,000-run campaign newspapers since July 2006 calling for building the bridge. For the past two Mondays, the SI in Denmark has held small, singing demonstrations at the Germany Embassy in Copenhagen to try to pressure Germany to join the project, and last Monday and today, the LYM/Bueso in Berlin have demonstrated at the German Transportation Ministry. They were present as the participants left the press conference announcing the agreement to build the bridge, and became the focus of press attention. Also, today the Schiller Institute in Sweden held a demonstration in front of the German Embassy supporting the building of the bridge.