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Elbe expansion on hold, again

October 2, 2014

A top German court has decided to wait until 2015 before ruling on the proposed expansion of the Elbe River. Hamburg wants an easier waterway for big ships, but environmental groups fear the worst for the ecosystem.

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Deutschland Hamburg Elbevertiefung Eimerkettenbagger
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/dpaweb

Germany's Federal Administrative Court announced on Thursday that it would delay a long-awaited ruling on the massive expansion of the northwestern stretch of the Elbe River from Hamburg to the North Sea.

The judges in Leipzig said that they could not reach a decision without first deferring to the EU Court of Justice, which is currently hearing a similar case about the expansion of the Weser River. The Luxembourg court is expected to hand down a verdict in 2015.

In July, the German court had already warned that the ruling on the Weser would be "relevant to the case."

The northern German city of Hamburg has long boasted the second-largest port in Europe after Rotterdam. For roughly 12 years, it has attempted numerous times to introduce plans to deepen the 130-kilometer (80-mile) stretch of the Elbe which leads to the North Sea as a means to meet future shipping demands.

The environmental groups BUND and Nabu, as well as the World Wide Fund (WWF), have argued that deepening the waterway to 16 meters (52 feet) could harm water quality and threaten local wildlife. Their case brought development to a halt in October 2012.

Hamburg officials contend that the port faces a problem if it can't accommodate new, larger container ships, which have a draft of 14.5 meters. Failing to develop the harbor for future commerce could, thus, endanger thousands of jobs, it says.

kms/mkg (Reuters, dpa)