Although the distance was twice as long as the preferred route across the Fehmarn Belt, the bridge would have been be built in manageable water depths as this part of the Baltic is quite shallow.

For instance the sea south of Gedser on Falster has depths of less than 10 metres (33 ft) for some 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) in this area.

The case for the Gedser–Rostock bridge was that it would have been the shortest and most direct link between Scandinavia and Berlin, the high-growth areas in Eastern/Central Europe, and the Central Industrial Region in Poland.

[1] On 4 June 2007, the then-Danish transport minister Flemming Hansen (Conservative People's Party) announced he had rejected the Gedser–Rostock proposal because it would put the process "ten years back".

[3] Eventually after 12 years of planning, economic summits, and international agreements, construction work on the Fehmarn Belt link officially began 1 January 2021.