Safeguarding Winter Navigation in the European Maritime Space

ongoing

Main objective of the project WINMOS IV - Safeguarding Winter Navigation in the European Maritime Space (EMS) is to ensure sustainable, functional, resilient and efficient cross-border short-sea shipping and year-round maritime transport by providing ice-breaking services by five upgraded (SE) and one newly constructed (FI) icebreakers. The project mitigates the bottleneck caused by sea ice during winter in the European Union’s northernmost waters in the Baltic Sea. The project upgrades the winter navigation system and icebreaker fleet by constructing a new Finnish icebreaker replacing a 60-70-year-old one, and by upgrading five existing icebreakers of Sweden. The new icebreaker enables use of green fuels and advances the green transition towards carbon neutral icebreaker fleet. The project modernizes maritime transport and upgrades open-access short-sea shipping links serving several TEN-T core and comprehensive ports in the Baltic Sea. The project supports the European Transport Corridors (Scandinavian-Mediterranean, Baltic-Adriatic, North Sea-Baltic, and Baltic Sea-Black Sea-Aegean Sea) via EMS, ensuring year-round accessibility to Finland and Sweden. The project contributes to the general priorities like the situation created by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, it supports military mobility goals and the improvement of the transport infrastructure resilience for climate change. Moreover, the project reduces environmental impact and improves efficiency of maritime transport, driving it towards climate neutrality by 2050. WINMOS IV is part of the global project developing winter navigation in the Baltic Sea by Finland, Sweden and Estonia. Based on the long-term cooperation in winter navigation, starting from the governance of the Member States, the states together strengthen the security of supply. Previous WINMOS projects have been co-funded by the EU. The current consortium consists of the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency (FTIA) and the Swedish Maritime Administration (SMA).