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Copenhagen to allow bars to stay open later from 2025

A majority in the Copenhagen City government has voted to allow outside opening until 2am in a number of areas of the city, beginning in 2025.

Published: 5 December 2023 11:50 CET

Copenhagen to allow bars to stay open later from 2025

Bars in some parts of Copenhagen will be able to stay open later from 2025. Photo by Mathew Browne on Unsplash

Despite previously considering a retraction of opening times, Copenhagen Municipality will now give bars the option of staying open later by permitting outside service until 2am in restricted zones.

“It’s a balance between having a living city and on the other hand making sure that everyone can live here and be here,” city councillor Line Barfod of the Red Green Alliance said as she confirmed the decision to news wire Ritzau.

The new rules will come into effect in 2025. While they will allow some opening until 2am, the majority of bars and restaurants will still be required to close at midnight.

A previous proposal suggested reducing midnight opening times to 10pm in response to complaints over noise from residents.

Barfod said that the decision to reform closing times, in part by the partial extensions to 2am along with a charge for late opening, which will be spent bolstering compliance, would help better regulate noise issues.

“We are expecting it to mean that inconveniences will be lesser for those who live near bars with outside areas,” she said.

The proposal to reduce opening times looked for a long time as if it would be implemented in Copenhagen, with a majority of parties in the city council in favour.

But the Alternative and Social Democratic parties last week withdrew support, opening a path to the model that has now been adopted.

“We are very pleased that we can continue with normal outside service until midnight and that the Social Democrats have made U-turn here, so we don’t have to close the city down at 10pm,” Barfod said.

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Where Malmö plans to place its first three Copenhagen Metro stops

Malmö and Copenhagen have been pushing for an Öresund Metro linking the two cities since at least 2011, but so far neither the Swedish government nor the Danish one have committed to stumping up their share of the roughly 30 billion Danish kroner (47 billion Swedish kronor, €4 billion) required.

Malmö hopes the Swedish government will take a decision on the project this autumn, and in preparation, the city’s planning board last Thursday took a decision on where the first three stops of the Öresund Metro should be placed.

They have selected Fullriggaren (currently a bus stop at the outermost tip of the city’s Västra Hamnen district), Stora Varvsgatan, in the centre of Västra Hamnen, and Malmö’s Central Station, as the locations of the first three stops, after which the idea is to extend the metro into the city.

Stefana Hoti, the Green Party councillor who chairs the planning committee, said that the new Fehmarn Belt connection between the Danish island of Lolland and Germany, which is expected to come into use in 2029, will increase the number of freight trains travelling through Copenhagen into Sweden making it necessary to build a new route for passengers.

Part of the cost, she said, could come from tolls levied on car and rail traffic over the existing Öresund Bridge, which will soon no longer need to be used to pay off loans taken to build the bridge more than 20 years ago.

“The bridge will be paid off in the near future. Then the tolls can be used to finance infrastructure that strengthens the entire country and creates space for more freight trains on the bridge,” Hoti told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

According to planning documents given out by the city planning authorities, the stop at Fullrigagaren would be called Galeonen and would be roughly, the one at Stora Varvsgatan will be called Masttorget, and the third stop would be called Malmö Central.

Source: Malmö Kommun

After Fullriggaren the next stop would be at Lergravsparken in the Amagerbro neighbourhood, which connects with the current M2 line, after which the there will be four new stops on the way to Copenhagen Central, including DR Byen on the current M1 line.

The hope is that the Öresund Metro will reduce the journey time between Copenhagen Central and Malmö Central from 40 minutes to 25 minutes.

Source: Oresunds Metro

But that’s not all. Excavating a tunnel between Malmö and Copenhagen will produce large amounts of earth, which the architect firm Arkitema has proposed should be used to extend Malmö’s Västra Hamnen district out into the sea, creating a new coastal district called Galeonen, meaning “The Galleon”, centred on the Fullriggaren Metro stop.

This project is similar to the Lynetteholm project in Copenhagen, which will use earth excavated for the Copenhagen Metro extension to build a peninsular in front of Copenhagen Harbour, providing housing and protecting the city from rising sea levels.

Rather than producing a sea wall to protect the new area from rising sea levels, Arkitema and its partner, the Danish engineering firm COWI, have proposed a new coastal wetland area.

“Instead of building a wall, we extended the land out into the sea. Then a green area is formed which is allowed to flood, and over time it will become a valuable environment, partly as a green area for Malmö residents, partly because of the rich biodiversity that will be created there,” Johanna Wadhstorp, an architect for Arkitema based in Stockholm, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

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