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| - Estonia and Finland will relaunch joint efforts to look into the construction of a 100-kilometre (60-mile) railway tunnel under the Baltic Sea between the two capitals, the Finnish transport minister said on Tuesday. Speaking a day after the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on major transport projects, minister Timo Harakka told AFP that "it is too early to say whether there is a compelling case" for the 20-billion-euro ($24-billion) project. However, "our responsibility is to make that possible" should a decision be made to proceed in the future. The proposed tunnel between Helsinki and Tallinn would connect Finland to the planned Rail Baltica line, which will link the capitals of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to Europe's high-speed rail network. "These are not just peripheral local projects, but a vital part of the European rail network spanning from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Sea," Harakka said. Although the agreement does not bind either country to the tunnel, it does formalise Finnish and Estonian transport cooperation, potentially opening the region's railway projects up to EU funding. These include improved links up to the Arctic that would make freight movement between Europe and Asia much faster. A working group of experts from both countries will now look into the feasibility of the tunnel project, a joint statement said. A 2018 study failed to discern any cost benefits from the scheme, but concluded that linking the two capitals could stimulate the wider region's economy in a similar way to the Oresund bridge which opened in 2000 linking Denmark's capital Copenhagen with Malmo in neighbouring Sweden. sgk/spm
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