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Bridging the iron curtain? Cooperation around the Baltic Rim
Abstract
What sets the agenda around the Baltic Rim and what are its consequences in terms of political space? Various views have been figured in this debate, ranging from a “clash of civilizations” to predictions that the Baltic area will form one of the “hottest” growth regions in Europe. A variety of new spatial constructions have emerged and numerous regional acronyms and organizations have proliferated. Rich, and rather pluralist, constellations have surfaced. Although there is little to support assumptions of clearly delineated conflicts, a considerable variety of views point to a slow, but steady, pattern of integration and regionalization.
... Such ambitious objectives were supported in a number of academic studies that called for a radical re-organisation of the EU's relations with neighbouring countries. A 'Europe of regions' in a structure of 'Olympic circles' would complement or even transform the current dominant approach of hub-and-spoke diplomacy in a structure of 'concentric circles', with the EU at the core, accession candidates occupying the 'inner circles' and non-candidates relegated to the outer circles (Emerson, 1999; Joenniemi, 1999). Such a regional approach, it was argued, could counteract the trend towards the creation of new dividing lines in Europe and create stronger incentives for the countries in the 'outer circles' to converge on European norms and values. ...
... While stating the need for a " comprehensive strategy, an institutional framework and adequate financing arrangements " , Lipponen (1997) pointed out that cooperation in Northern Europe was " already organised well enough to make major new institutional arrangements unnecessary " and that therefore no new financing was required. Some observers noted early on in the process of establishing the Northern Dimension that a certain " scaling down " of the initiative had occurred (Joenniemi, 1999). This was evident in the official documents from the EU on the Northern Dimension, one of which stated that " the Commission considers that neither new permanent structures nor new budget lines should be considered " (European Commission, 1999). ...
... Since around the time of the accession of two more Nordic states – Finland and Sweden – to the EU in 1995, the preference for bilateralism has been tempered by more active regional policies by the EU towards the Baltic region. This started with the preparation by the Commission of the Baltic Sea Region Initiative, presented to the CBSS summit in spring 1996 (Joenniemi, 1999), and was later followed by the Northern Dimension initiative. However, apart from this, regional approaches have been virtually absent in the EU's relations with its Eastern neighbours (European Commission, 2004), and the EU has, for instance, been unwilling to engage further with regional cooperation in the Black Sea region. ...
It has been suggested in recent years that EU policies towards Northern Europe could serve as a potential model for the EU’s relations with its other neighbours. This paper focuses on two particular EU policies towards non-EU members in Northern Europe: the Northern Dimension (ND) initiative and the European Economic Area (EEA), which are analysed in light of two broader themes: first, how the EU organises its policy towards its neighbours more generally and, secondly, the enlargement process and how the EU has attempted to develop alternatives to EU membership. The Northern Dimension could be a useful model for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), in particular vis-à-vis the Eastern neighbours, although it must be recognised that the regional approach has played a limited role in confronting strategic challenges and resolving politically contentious issues in EU neighbourhood policies. The initial proposals from the EU for its European Neighbourhood Policy fall far short of the sort of relations currently existing between the EU and the three EFTA (European Free Trade Association) states in the EEA. The agreements with the erstwhile EU accession candidates of Central and Eastern Europe and the countries of south-east Europe could appear to provide more suitable models for the ENP than the EEA. However, the prospect of eventual EU membership is a fundamental premise underlying these agreements, which makes certain provisions and institutional arrangements acceptable to the associated states that might otherwise be found objectionable. This conundrum is likely to dominate the debate on EU neighbourhood policies for years to come.
... Jaeger (2000) argued that it was time to conceive of a 'Europe of difference' that included Russia. Joenniemi (2000) expressed optimism for the moving away of exclusionary dichotomies towards debordering and 'fuzzy' borders. ...
... This points to the assumption in poststructuralist work that the 'old' security agenda (that which the 'East' continues to uphold) is lacking and inferior in contrast to the new and improved agenda espoused by the West (Joenniemi 2000). The idea -not explicitly articulated but implicitly assumed -is that a new concept of security based on regionality that has already been adopted by the West is the way forward, while Russia remains entrenched in old concepts of security that revolve more around territoriality. ...
... Further complicating the cross-border interactive process is the region's reinsertion into the West through the expansion of both the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO)-Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic became members in Thus, the East-West divide, while still discernible, is no longer marked by an Iron Curtain, but by a wide variety of cross-border projects designed to solve mutual problems and integrate the East into the West. A panoply of innovative projects can be found developing to meet the unique circumstances present in each region, from Europe's "High North"-marked by the recently created Barents Euro-Arctic Region, and the historically based Baltic Sea Region (Joenniemi 1997(Joenniemi , 2000-down through the G e r m a n -P o l i s h -C z e c h b o r d e r r e g i o n sa n d t h e C a r p a t h i a n r e g i o n ( p a r t s o f P o l a n d , S l o v a k i a , Hungary, and the Ukraine), to the Austrian-Hungarian and Austrian-Slovenian border regions. ...
... At the same time, the (critical) geopolitical perspective developed here also interprets the political signi cance of macroregions in terms of the competitive management of the forces of economic and political globalisation (Hocking, 1996). This approach has also found followers among IR scholars, many of them from Nordic countries, who have pursued issues of region-building, identity-construction and security (Joenniemi, 1999;Neumann, 1999). ...
The European Union is an example of regionalisation characterised not only by economic integration, but also by a 'spatial politics' aimed at instilling a sense of European identity and citizenship. Spatial politics are discussed here in terms of governance, regional policies and the production of geographical knowledge that reinforce the notion of a diverse but interdependent European space and, hence, political community. The paper examines recent planning concepts and regional development initiatives and their socio-political qualities and, in particular, their contested nature. Critical questions are raised, for example, regarding European spatial planning, its openness to different spatial development options and its apparent domination by 'core' Europe. The author suggests that European spatial politics can potentially contribute to a more cohesive political community, but that this is contingent upon the translation of symbolism into concrete incentives and opportunity structures that promote wider Europeanisation. This also requires forceful institutions, integrating symbolism and clear and effective forms of governance that allow regional diversity to find appropriate political expression.
... The new regional projects merged historical metaphors of the borderland with dialogue initiatives, a meeting ground for different actors and the ambition to link up to the central processes on the European Continent (Joenniemi, 1994;Tunander, 1994). 16 In the early 1990s, a small group of Nordic/Scandinavian scholars combined a return to geopolitics with identity politics and constructivism joining the Nordic Social Democratic 'political ambition' to transcend the East-West fault-line, to 'bridge the Iron Curtain', to quote Pertti Joenniemi (1999). After the construction of the modern nation-state as a national romantic unity, these scholars 'remembered' and 'reconstructed' the pre-nation-state geopolitics of sea transport and medieval merchant networks into the postmodern world (Joenniemi and Waever, 1993;Tunander, 1994;Tunander, [1991] 1995). ...
After the Cold War, the Nordic states turned to the south, to the European Union. They established borderland regions to handle practicalities and relax the tension between east and west. Now, the Nordic states were free from Cold War bloc politics. The Nordic foreign policy elite amalgamated with Nordic constructivist scholars to reshape the political landscape of the North by re-inventing the pre-nation-state regional ties. However, the Nordic states also came to adapt to a new geometry of power, the Kjellénean power triangle. This return to Kjellénean geopolitics was not based on the power politics of the `US victory school', but, paradoxically enough, on European and Scandinavian relative weakness: a Geopolitik of the weak. Even more paradoxical, this return to geopolitics took place in Norway, Finland and to some extent in Denmark, not in Kjellén's home country of Sweden, i.e. as if the Swedish geopolitical taboo still made this impossible.
The eastern Baltic borders have become more prominent in public debates following the instrumentalized migration crisis orchestrated by Belarus in 2021. This article explores and assesses the discourses related to borders and border barriers emerging in the Baltic states in reaction to the “crisis”. Using a discourse analysis framework, the work engages with the discursive framing concerned with how to define and consolidate the border and the use of border barriers, as interpreted through media frames. The article situates the framing of borders and border barriers within geopolitical identities and the notion of entangled borders in the EU, referring to the overlapping of nation-state border regimes and the EU external border regime that occurs along the EU’s borderlands. The article finds that media frames relate to three primary discourses: increasing securitization, the Baltic states’ positionality within the EU, and the changing geopolitical space. Discourses on borders and border barriers reveal that different types of borders often entangle in each other, which, through this entanglement, contributes to how borders are constructed, conceived, and expressed.
Border studies have become increasingly global over the past two decades. Yet, a network analysis of the articles published in the Journal of Borderlands Studies from 1986 to 2018 shows that less than half of them have one or more coauthors. Unlike in other scientific disciplines, where a growth of co-publications is observed, this proportion has not really changed over the last decade. Our paper also shows that major divisions can be found within border studies, which is no small paradox for a science supposedly cross-border by nature. Despite the overall global increase in scientific connectivity, internationally co-authored papers are still an exception in our field and scholars have a strong preference for publishing within their own country. Instead of a fully integrated community, they form a fragmented network whose main components are mainly located in the United States. Interviews with border experts reveal that various obstacles contribute to the current fragmentation of border studies. In addition to being separated by geographical distance and, sometimes, by actual walls, border scholars must also able to overcome the cognitive, social, organizational, and institutional distance that separate them.
Niniejsza publikacja ma na celu przybliżenie czytelnikom wpływu Unii Europejskiej na integrację i procesy zachodzące w Regionie Morza Bałtyckiego. Przedstawiono w niej wyniki badań dotyczące nowo wykreowanego w UE podejścia makroregionalnego.
Region Morza Bałtyckiego od dawna jest obszarem niezwykle atrakcyjnym pod względem naukowym. Próba kompleksowego ujęcia relacji w nim zachodzących kusi wielu badaczy. Autorka analizuje politykę UE wobec Regionu Morza Bałtyckiego przez pryzmat podejścia makroregionalnego
i wielopoziomowego. Takie ujęcie jest pewnym połączeniem badań teoretycznych i praktycznych, ukazuje bowiem nie tylko koncepcję teoretyczną, ale także jej praktyczny wymiar.
Publikacja przeznaczona jest dla osób zainteresowanych Regionem Morza Bałtyckiego, a także teoriami studiów europejskich. Może być pomocą dydaktyczną dla studentów, punktem odniesienia do dalszych badań nad koncepcją makroregionalną dla badaczy oraz ciekawą lekturą dla pasjonatów tematyki.
The Baltic Sea region and the Black Sea area are overlapping regions that have their own political, historical and cultural peculiarities. They belong to the same geopolitical system, within which they are developing two regional cooperation subsystems strongly influenced both by internal political and economic dynamics and by external actors. The aim of this research is to analyse the political and economic factors that influence the cooperation in the Baltic Sea region and the Black Sea area by means of comparative approach, which will help to determine the similarities and differences necessary to give an overview of two strategic areas in the European context.
CEPS established a template for EU strategy towards the Balkans already during the Kosovo war, and this was refined in the Ljubljana Declaration by the think tanks of the region (with CEPS) in July before the Sarajevo Summit. The subsequent evolution of policy in the region and of the EU and Stability Pact is compared with these proposals. Some parts of the CEPS proposals are developed further. Implications for the rest of the wider Europe are also examined, in search for the defining concepts and mechanisms of an order for the entire European space.
As illustrated by the recent adoption of the European Union Baltic Sea Strategy, a new level of governance seems to be emerging in the European integration process, i.e. the macroregional level. The present paper aims at identifying the necessary ingredients for successful macro-regional cooperation. It draws on the example of the Baltic Sea Region (BSR), where the combination of intense cooperation and of heterogeneity is particularly interesting to analyze. The author argues that effective macro-regional cooperation requires four factors: a common perception of interests, a common identity, a well-balanced cooperation method, and the involvement of the EU. The respective relevance of each of these factors is tested and some key strengths and weaknesses of cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region are identified.
The external borders of the European Union (EU) are becoming increasingly difficult to delineate as it exports policies to states beyond its own membership. While the EU possesses a clearly defined membership, its borders are `fuzzy'. The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of these `fuzzy' borders on the EU's neighbours - and its resulting `fuzzy' politics. Two case studies are considered: the Baltic States and the Mediterranean. In each, the authors seek to assess the impact of EU relations with these two regions. Four tentative conclusions are drawn. First, the EU is indeed surrounded by regions that can be regarded as intermediate spaces between the inside and outside of the Union, and these regions have indeed become the targets of significant `policy-export'. Over time, the EU has developed substantial interests and significant influence in what can be called the `near abroad'. Second, the EU does not possess a coherent policy of dealing with this `near abroad'. An uneasy mix of initiatives often contradicts the stated goal of region-to-region relations. Third, EU relations with the two regions actually appear to serve rather opposing functions - simultaneously facilitating enlargement and non-enlargement. Finally, the regional impact of EU policies varies considerably as a consequence of the different geo-political and institutional context in the two regions.
Thorvald Stoltenberg Ambassador Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board A.5 the second volume of the this yearbook goes to press, Europe faces new and to some degree unexpected dangers of political and ideological division. It is a frightening realisation that not even ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Empire and the democratisation and economic transformation of most of the old Soviet-dominated Central and Eastern Europe, fissures have appeared that threaten to undo some of what has been accomplished in terms of East-West rapprochement. The immediate crisis over Kosovo may well have been resolved by the time this is being read. However, it is hard to escape a foreboding that some of the mutual ill will between Russia and the Western powers that has surfaced in the wake of that conflict may linger for years to come. It is therefore imperative that Russia and the Western powers sit down to discuss what can be done to avoid similar conflicts in the future and how to overcome mutual recriminations so that they do not harden into new political front lines between East and West in Europe. The recent developments make the promotion of integration in the NEBI area even more urgent. So far this process has been based on two equally impor tant platforms: economic integration and political integration, including mea sures to dismantle old conflict potentials.
The 1985 White Paper on Completing the Internal Market proclaimed the four well-known liberties: free movement of goods, services, capital and labour. Quite a bit is known about the effects of trade and capital flows that cross the intra-EU borders. The same, however, cannot be said of the quantities of intra-EU labour force mobility.1 Likewise, surprisingly little is known of the qualifications of international migrants (Fischer and Straubhaar 1996: 145). Yet labour force mobility is crucial for the flexible production strategy and the well-educated multi-skilled personnel of the post-Fordist, knowledge-intensive globalised economy (Ruigrok and van Tulder 1995).
World history is often depicted in terms of a struggle over power which culminates in territorial changes. According to this view, when power relations change and empires fall, previously stable areas are hit by territorial turmoil and new border adjustments. The end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union were no exception: in the Baltic Sea area they resulted in German unification and the regaining of independence of the three Baltic republics. Other territorial questions emerged, some as a consequence of these changes of borders, some due to a reborn speculation in re-establishing other historical borders.
The Baltic Sea region is rich in minorities.1 This chapter presents a survey of the regions capacity to constructively tackle minority-related conflicts, provides information on the present state of minorities, and refers to a series of obstacles that hamper the Regions ability to improve minority-majority relations. Finally it focuses on the office of the Commissioner of the Council of Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and reflects on its contribution to overcoming the impediments to developing the region as a zone of peace.
Eight years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and six years after the demise of the Soviet Union, the entire North European and Baltic Sea area is still very much in a process of transformation brought about by the largely unexpected collapse of the Soviet state and its dependencies in the region, Poland and the German Democratic Republic.
Immediately after the break-up of the centrally planned economies in Eastern Europe, there were strong expectations of a rapid increase in foreign trade between the West and the East. These hopes were certainly strongest in countries sharing common borders. After a few years, however, it has become obvious that the optimism was somewhat exaggerated. Part of the explanation comes from the development in the East, not least the dramatic decrease in economic activity and industrial production, especially in Russia and the Baltic states. This, in turn was a result of the breakdown of COMECON and the trade between the Eastern countries, which had been based on a partly ‘artificial’ division of labour between these countries. Also, the political unrest increased the risks and uncertainties in both industry and trade. Obviously, the sudden exposition to direct international competition caused a shock to the formerly centrally regulated economies. Another part of the explanation is related to the simultaneous downturn of the business cycle in the West. Some countries even experienced a decline in gross production for short periods in the beginning of the 1990s.
World politics is entering a new phase, in which the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of international conflict will be cultural. Civilizations - the highest cultural groupings of people - are differentiated from each other by religion, history, language and tradition. These divisions are deep and increasing in importance. From Yugoslavia to the Middle East to Central Asia, the fault lines of civilizations are the battle lines of the future. In this emerging era of cultural conflict the United States must forge alliances with similar cultures and spread its values wherever possible. With alien civilizations the West must be accommodating if possible, but confrontational if necessary. In the final analysis, however, all civilizations will have to learn to tolerate each other.
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