The railway infrastructure of the Bothnian Corridor is of great importance for transnational cargo flows within EU and to the rest of the world and it is listed in the Baltic Sea Strategy action plan as an optional flagship project. The corridor is of great importance for all the states in the Baltic Sea Region and central Europe, for transports of cargo as well as for sustainable passenger transports.

The Green Corridor initiative was taken up on the EU agenda during the Swedish presidency in 2009, following the EC communications on a priority freight network (COM(2007) 608) and greening of transports (COM 2008:433). It is also motivated by numerous studies and reports on the potential for improved railway infrastructure, inter-modality and logistics for meeting the needs in the Baltic Sea Region and especially those caused by increased exploitation of natural resources in the Barents region.

The overall objective is to increase the integration between the northern Scandinavia and Barents, with its vast natural resources and increasing industrial production, with the industrial chain and end markets in the Baltic Sea Region and central Europe.

This will be done by improved planning, use and utilisation of the infrastructure in the Bothnian Corridor, by practicing green corridor concepts, promoting smooth inter-modal solutions and increasing collaboration between society, industry, transport and logistics stakeholders.

The project is conducted through 4 interlinked thematic work packages.

• WP3: Green corridor concepts, logistic nodes and terminals.
• WP4:Logistic chains and transport flows.
• WP5:Economic impact of infrastructure on regional and industrial growth.
• WP6: Bothnian transport strategy and stakeholders collaboration.

The project includes partners from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany and Poland. All partners have been selected on the basis of geographic or thematic interest and benefit and possible contribution to the project. The partners represents regional authorities, cities, publicly owned ports, national authorities, universities and one governmental department . Most of the partners come from the northernmost areas in Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Since the project aims for improving the integration of these areas along the value chain of natural resources, product and cargo flows, with the big markets in central Europe, key partners has been included in Germany and Poland, representating also regions, cities and ports. Outputs from the project should be evaluations, guidelines and improved business models, on how to increase the efficiency of the logistics in the transport flows from and to the nothern areas in the Baltic Sea Region. The project is supported by three ministries of transports.