In mid-June, the European Union pledged to provide one million euros ($1.13 million) to finance a preliminary study on the feasibility of constructing a railway tunnel between Tallinn and Helsinki, under the Gulf of Finland (ERR, June 15).

The decision has attracted widespread attention to a project that officials in both cities, and more broadly in both countries, have been pushing for many years. Such attention is entirely justified not only because of the enormous engineering challenge such a tunnel would represent, but also because of the ways in which it would transform the geopolitics of the entire region, from the Nordics through the Baltic countries to Europe.

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The economic benefits from a Tallinn–Helsinki Rail Tunnel to both Estonia and Finland would be enormous. Their capitals would effectively become one extended metropolis, much as the bridge between Copenhagen, Denmark, and Malmo, Sweden, has made those two cities.

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