The Nordic countries Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway together with Schleswig- Holstein, Niedersachsen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hamburg and Bremen of Germany, initiated in 1995 a joint action, the VIKING project, aiming at the development and co-ordination of national and cross-border ITS. In 2001 VIKING was established as part of the TEMPO programme which ran until 2006 during which the European dimension grew steadily in importance.

Hence the partners from VIKING decided to participate in EasyWay from 2007 as one of eight Euro-Regions, involving Lithuania for the first time. The EasyWay/VIKING area covers a considerable part of northern Europe, and offers extremely varying conditions for road transport. The road and traffic situation in Northern Europe has particular characteristics such as:

• The traffic load is fairly low on the interregional network (except for certain German links);
• There are few or no alternative routes in case of disturbances;
• Capacity problems are local;
• Road Weather conditions can be extremely hard;
• Ferry links forms an important part of the road transport network.

In EasyWay the approach will be shifted towards deployment of services rather than systems. Also, the traveller and hauler will stand in focus, rather than the road user in general. This means that co-modality will be a core issue as well as freight and logistics. Interfaces between transport modes and urban traveller needs will be addressed.