The Kvarken Council strives to promote and develop a strong and viable region with the help of cross-border cooperation. As a neutral cooperation platform, the Council serves all its members and actors in the Kvarken region.
The Kvarken Council EGTC is the first fully Nordic EGTC area. Kvarken Council EGTC was legally established on 1 January 2021 with ten founding members and six new members.
The Kvarken Council EGTC's area of operations is called the Kvarken region
The narrowest part of the Gulf of Bothnia is called the Kvarken Strait or Kvarken. The distance from the Finnish coast to the Swedish coast is about 80 km and only about 25 km between the outermost islands. The Kvarken divides the Bothnian Bay in the north from the Bothnian Sea in the south and forms a shallow underwater threshold in the Gulf of Bothnia. The Kvarken's deepest spot is only about 25 meters.
The members of Kvarken Council EGTC are located in the area consisting of three Ostrobothnian counties in Finland and the county of Västerbotten and the municipality of Örnsköldsvik in Sweden. Together they form the Kvarken region. The entire Kvarken region extends over a distance of 550km over Sweden and Finland.
From an association to a stable legal entity
The Kvarken Council was founded in 1972 during the first Kvarken Conference in Vaasa, Finland. The first years were dedicated to the organization's formation and the cooperation's anchoring in the municipalities, authorities, and organizations. In 1979, the Kvarken Council became a part of the official Nordic border-regional cooperation, with financial support from the Nordic Council of Ministers and its Nordic Senior Official's Committee for Regional Policy (NÄRP).
The Kvarken Council's operations have been administered by a non-profit association as of 2008. At the turn of the year 2020–2021, the Kvarken Council changed from a registered association to a stable legal entity when the Kvarken council EGTC began its operations.
