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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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Please look into old dictionaries for "Oresund". If by chance you find something it probably will be that it is a 10-miles wide strait between Sweden and Denmark in Northern Europe and more specifically between the cities of Copenhagen and Malmo. And that's it. If you expect that we'll talk here about the sea mammals please close this page. Our story isn't about fishes and other sea creatures. Instead we'll take a look at the newest European economic region, one of the best examples of cross-border economic integration in the continent and in the world.

Everything started in 1991 when Denmark and Swedish governments agreed to build a bridge to connect the two countries situated at the opposite sides of the sea channel. The 16-kilometers link was officially completed exactly 2 years ago in August 1999 and in the summer of 2000 the project was opened to the traffic. Now the Oresund bridge is the world's longest single bridge carrying both road and railway traffic.

The bridge of Oresund

For the first time since the Ice Age (some 7000 years ago) the two countries were connected by land link. But far more important is that the economic and transport infrastructures and the human capital of the two cities (1.7 million workforce) were united.

To have just an idea of what has happened in the recent year let have a look at the past. Only 2 years ago people from the opposite sides of the channel had to travel more than 2 hours by ferries (the only possible way of transport) to work or simply to pay a visit to friends. Worse than that, in bad weather the connection between the two cities (and countries) was cut for days. Now with the new bridge people can travel between the two countries in less than 30 minutes. This means that the travel takes less than going from the Uptown to the Downtown in Manhattan (New York City) using the metro (usually the speediest way of transport there).

Let's look at the first results that gave this bridge for the surrounding urban communities and businesses, in first place in Copenhagen and Malmo. The first result was that the Oresund region became the 4th by its population and number of scientific output in the European Union only surpassed by London, Paris and Berlin. This triggered an important influx of investments from the other parts of the two countries (Denmark and Sweden).

In Copenhagen the overall office vacancy rate dropped below 2 percent after reaching 5 percent in 1995. The average prime office rent in the city started to rise and reached almost $200 per sq.meter per year (1 sq.meter=10 sq.feet). The same trends are monitored in Malmo where the prime class office rents are reaching $180 per sq.meter per year.

As a matter of fact both Copenhagen and Malmo still offer good opportunities for investors in terms of relatively cheaper by the European standards office rents. For example in most European cities with population of and more than 1 million the prime class rents stand at more than $300 per sq.meter per year. In other like London or Frankfurt they almost reached $700 and $400.

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See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Sweden and Denmark.