THE ÖRESUND REGION – SIX YEARS WITH THE BRIDGE Richard Ek The Department of Service Management Lund University, Campus Helsingborg Box 882 S-251 08 Helsingborg Sweden [email protected] Towards a New Nordic Regionalism? Conference arranged by the Nordic Network of the Regional Studies Association in Balestrand, Norway, 4-5 May 2006 First Draft 1 Introduction In July 2000 the bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö in the south of Sweden was inaugurated. The bridge was a prerequisite of the realization of the Öresund region, a cross-border region politically delimited to include Sjælland and Bornholm in Denmark and the Swedish county Skåne (figure 1). Of course, the vision of an integrated Öresund region goes way back in time (a hundred years, fifty years, fifteen years, depending on the criteria emphasized)1 but it has all the time been a mutual understanding among the region-building actors that the Öresund region would really ’exist’ first when a fixed link was materialized in Öresund. The 1st of July 2000 was the day when the region stepped out into the real world, leaving visions, dreams and romantic notions of bridges behind (SDS 2000.07.01). Since that day the rate of the regional integration has been discussed as if regional integration could be measured on a scale or indexed (there is actually an ‘Öresund integration index’). Even if the regional integration, beginning with the inauguration of the Öresund Bridge, often has been argued to be a fundamental, even paradigmatic societal change,2 the discussion the six last years has been narrowly instrumental and technocratic in character. Even simplistic. How fast forward goes the integration? Not fast enough! In this paper I argue that one way to characterize the public discourse on and region building practices in the now six-year-old Öresund region is through the concept of simplicity. The Öresund region process is to a high degree regarded by its advocates as simple in the sense of not being complicated or complex (but not in any way in the sense of being gullible or feeble-minded). It is regarded as a difficult process, as the region builders are up against sinewy national institutions and regulations as well as intangible national cultural differences. It is regarded as a heterogeneous process as it 1 For a historical account in English, see Boye 1999: 84-141. 2 ‘It is not only an evolution, but a revolution, and the changes that are bound to come can hardly be imagined’ (Sven Landelius, managing director for the Öresund Consortium in SDS 1999.06.18) [Det är inte bara tal om en evolution, utan om en revolution, och de förändringar som kommer kan vi knappast föreställa oss fullt ut]. 2 involves a multitude of different actors (even if the actors that set the tone are quite few) from local football clubs to the Chambers of Commerce. But still, the integration process is regarded as simple, imagined as similar to an organic process and possible to fulfil through an almost causal formula: ‘better infrastructure, communications and transportation → higher mobility and interaction → regional integration’. Here, the simplicity of the discourse of the Öresund region is discussed based on two aspects of region building. Firstly, that the integration is regarded as politically simple, since there is no disagreement among the politicians about the regional idea per se. This means that the Öresund region is not considered to be a political project, an apprehension with political and democratic consequences that will be discussed below. Secondly, the geographical imagination of the Öresund region is simplistic (perhaps also starry-eyed) in the sense that it is not sensitive towards its intra- regional political geographies. As a consequence, intra-regional tensions are not addressed and handled in a thorough way and are instead ‘popping up’ as (geographically based) disputes around specific projects and co-operations. The paper is divided into five sections, including this introduction. Next section consists of a recapitulation of the Öresund integration process so far, that is, from year 2000 until today (spring of 2006). Without trying to answer whether the integration is a failure so far or not, this section will through “snapshots” discuss and comment different “integration variables” highlighted in the public discourse. In the third section, the Öresund region as a political project that do not seem to be regarded as political by the leading region-building actors (many of them political organizations) is discussed (integration regarded as politically simple). Following Slavoj Žižek’s discussion on the ‘post-political’, I argue in this section that the Öresund region (and maybe other cross-border regions as well) are managed by management technologies rather than governed by a political polity. This gliding from polity to management at the same time constitutes a tendency towards political simplicity. In the fourth section, the argument that integration seems to be regarded as geographically simple is presented. The dominant geographical imagination about regions in Europe today 3 gives a simplified picture of Europe’s political and economic geographies, emphasizing centripetal ‘forces’ on the behalf of centrifugal ones. Since the complexity of the Öresund region is not addressed in the region-building process, conflicts and disagreements rise instead around specific issues in the process of the managing of the region. One such example is highlighted in the section, the organization of hosting the America’s Cup in Malmö in July and August 2005. Finally, in the conclusion, a rather bleak picture of the democratic potential of regions, at least the Öresund region, is put forward. Snapshots3 From a Region’s First Years The Öresund region is a quite well researched cross-border region, especially prior to the inauguration of the bridge.4 In public discourse, the ‘Öresund-talk’ increased to a crescendo in the summer 2000 when the bridge was officially declared opened under celebratory conditions (primarily adapted to look good on the TV-screen since the main target was ’30 seconds on CNN’, but nevertheless with a good public influx). Thereafter, a kind of devotional hangover seemed to seize the regional project and the region-building actors started to quietly observe the most tangible measure of ‘integration’ at hand at that moment: the number of vehicles that drove over the bridge (easily measured since it is a toll-bridge) and the number of people using the Öresund trains to travel to the other side. The owner of the bridge, the Öresund Consortium (owned jointly in its turn by the Swedish and Danish states) had made forecasts regarding the traffic flow after the opening of the bridge, and after some time it was evident that those forecasts had been far to optimistic. When the Öresund Consortium calculated that close to on average 12 000 vehicles should cross the bridge each day 3 The recollection of a region’s first years can be presented in many ways. Here I have chosen to focus on the public discussion that ran high especially during the time of the bridge’s ‘birthdays’ (‘one year with the bridge’, ‘two years with the bridge’ etc.). 4 References in English include Lyck & Berg 1997, Andersen 1999, Maskell & Törnqvist 1999, Jerneck 1999, Matthiessen 2000, Berg 2001, Bucken-Knapp 2001, Linnros & Hallin 2001, Ceccato & Haining 2004, Jensen & Richardson 2004, Stöber 2004. 4 the first year (Öresundskonsortiet 1999), the actual traffic in 2001 was on average 7000 vehicles each day. Thereafter the traffic has increased each year and in 2005 the actual traffic had catched up with the traffic forecasts done six years before (and doubled in relation to the traffic in 2001 (SDS 2006.03.16)). At the same time, people who traveled by train increased from 4.2 million 2001 to X.X million 2005 (SDS 2005.07.01,). Even if less and less people travel by ferry over Öresund (primarily between Helsingborg and Helsingør in Northern Öresund) there is no doubt that the traffic has increased (SDS 2005.03.10). Nevertheless, from the start different voices in the public discourse has argued that the bridge is not used as effective as it could be. Being a toll bridge after all, it can cost up to 25 Euro to drive a car single journey over the Öresund Bridge. But, as the argument goes, if the bridge was free to use, the integration process should be sped up. Here, the financial agreement between the Danish state and Swedish state regarding the bridge, its repayment conditions, etc. has been pointed out as an immanent problem (with a clear state-level dimension, as the two central states are accused of preventing growth on a (trans-) regional scale) (KvP 2004.10.09, SDS 2005.06.29). The central – regional conflict dimension is explicit in other areas as well. Actually, the region’s first six years is in a sense a declaration of the tough persistence of national institutions. The governments of Sweden and Denmark have been in constant negotiations around issues like how the trans-border commuter should be taxed (in the country he or she lives in or works in) and differences in social security systems and labor-market policies (SDS 2002.06.17). This where issues which were supposed to be solved quite easily back in 1999-2000, and some steps towards a harmonization between the two national systems has been taken,5 but a lot of big issue remain to be solved. In the frustration that has turned up, the region-building actors blame the Danish and 5 In 2003, a taxation agreement was reached where it was decided that people who live in Sweden and work in Denmark pay their taxes in Denmark, but that Sweden at the same time is compensated financially (SDS 2003.11.05).