Pami Aalto

1. Europe’s North: Historical Geopolitics and International Institutional Dynamics, 2-5 ECTS2. Regionalization since the 1990s: How important?Autumn 2011 Pami Aalto Jean Monnet Professor/Director, Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on European Politics and European-Russian Relations, University of Tampere pami.aalto@uta.fi <http://www.uta.fi/jkk/jmc/index.html>

2. The idea of a regionalised (northern) Europe/Baltic Sea region (BSR) of the 1990s • In contrast to the interwar era, now the regionalising initiative did not come from the Baltics (EST), but from GER/DEN, and later spread into SWE and FIN, and even attracted some, albeit limited positive response from the Baltics – much more so from Russia • The EU was developing its own regional approach in order to give voice to the regional level where a substantial part of Union policies are implemented; Committee of Regions in 1991 • In the BSR, the Union encountered a regional setting quite different from the earlier enlargement rounds: a rapidly building network of GER, and Nordic initiated regional organizations: unique in European and even global context – 600 organisations with a transborder capacity • Uniqueness stemmed from the dense network initiated by self-conscious region builders promoting both intergovernmental and sub-state level regional organizations and activities – academics and policy-makers from the Nordics looking for a new locus of co-operation • Analogous ideas for a new locus of co-operation from the north GER provinces: a new Hanse or an Ostseeraum • In scholarly literature, these region-building patterns within the BSR were taken as one case of the formation of a regionalized European order • The existence of visions and political experiments like these inspired scholars to refer to the BSR as a ‘laboratory’ of peaceful change in Europe (Hubel) • Laboratory vs. space vs. container vs. test ground vs. pilot area, etc.

3. Geopolitical visions of European regionalisation Europe of regions:a mosaic of political agents and subjectivities, where regions and cities form non-Westphalian chains extending across state borders Europe of Olympic rings: a more ordered but yet regionalized formation, where the subjectivities centre around an imagined region like the BSR instead of the EU centre. In this vision, integration among both state level and sub-state level regional actors overrides integration between them and the EU-centre that here remains only loosely defined

4. 15th CBSS Ministerial Session, Elsinore 4th June 2009 <http://www.cbss.org/component/option,com_rsgallery2/Itemid,130/gid,1/page,inline/view,inline/ Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and the EU • DEN, GER initiated the CBSS in 1992 to facilitate ‘low politics’ co-op among BSR states + ICE, NOR and the EU Commission as a founding member • The Commission’s legal mandate to participate was relatively unclear (and still is especially after creation of European External Action Service • The mission of the CBSS was to assist in the transformation of the Baltics, POL and RUS to reduce the risks and soft security threats that they were perceived to pose to their EU neighbours in the region • Covered policy sectors after Riga Declaration 2008: economy, energy (not well); environment (not much); education and culture (better); civil security (mainly human trafficking) • Tries to turn itself to a project-based organisation since then (difficult) • Has a fairly strong secretariat but for concrete projects relies on funding by donors and participating countries: Nordics, NCM, EU – so far just one project where all member states contribute (Pskov EuroFaculty) • The Commission first ‘activist’ with the FIN, SWE (and NOR) membership in sight, it had been inexorably drawn into the BSR, and thus felt a need to ‘examine the future role of the Union [would be] called upon to play to further stability and economic development in the [area]’ (European Commission 1994; cited in Johansson 2002: 379) • Commission became frustrated with the CBSS’s capacity play a central role in the implementation of the EU’s 2009 Baltic Sea Strategy

5. Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM), Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC) and EU involvement • NCM founded in 1972, with a permanent administration in Copenhagen • Many of the ‘old’ Nordic regional co-operation programmes under the NCM became affected by the EU as did CBSS programmes • Several new Interreg programmes of the EU to promote cross-border co-operation, develop PPPs and set up institutions at the regional level were made conditional upon the co-sponsoring of the NCM. Interreg ‘europeanized’ the existing NCM programmes by having largely the same geographical coverage + up to 20-fold funding and EU-designed routines • ‘Europeanization’ also in the NOR-RUS -centred and NOR-initiated BEAC founded with 1993 Kirkenes declaration; 2007 international secretariat in Kirkenes • BEAC’s original mission: environmental + other problems originating from the Kola peninsula, and other co-op; also to simply get the formerly divided parties on the same table, speaking of less divisive non-military security issues • Has both intergovernmental and regional levels; today works on economic and commercial cooperation, sustainable living environment, human resources, indigenous peoples, transport and infrastructure, and information and promotion • For NOR, BEAC helped to get the EU involved in the very north and open up a new channel (the EU joined as a founding member) • Some regional actors in the Barents Regional Council started to view europeanization of co-op as compromising their own powers over the increasingly EU-funded programmes; EU involvement challenged the original nature of the whole Barents endeavour, yet EU still has largely ‘technical’ representation

6. Further ’europeanization’ of regional co-operation • Jauhiainen 2002: in two EU-regios (Karelia, Helsinki-Tallinn) and the ESTRUFIN network linking cities in FIN; EST, RUS, the importance and funding of EU programmes created cross-border projects precisely to obtain EU funding! • Cross-border co-operation ‘state controlled’ and ‘public authority driven’, but also ‘European-designed’ as networks started following EU spatial policy practices • The well-funded PHARE was launched in 1989/1990 to assist with the transition in the CEE. Since 1992, it also covered the Baltic states • The less well-funded TACIS was directed to the Former Soviet Union (FSU) excluding the Baltic states; whom the Union was about to include/exclude • The most ambitious co-ordinating role gradually taken by the EU came with the FIN initiative for a Northern Dimension (ND) of the EU in 1997; accepted by the Union during 1997—1998 in order to, among other things, introduce cohesion and to bring better structure into the various region-wide activities alongside the many bilateral programmes of Germany and the Nordics which targeted institution-building and alleviation of the transition problems in the Baltics, NW-RUS • By that time, the BSR and Barents co-op agendas were becoming understood as part of a wider conceptual framework of ‘north European co-operation’. This conceptual shift in favour of the term ‘Europe’ accentuated the north European region’s becoming a more integral part of continent-wide processes instead of indigenous patterns.

7. Renewed Northern Dimension (ND) of the EU, Iceland, Norway and Russia • Unlike the AC, BEAC, CBSS and NCM, the ND is not a regional organisation • Designed to be an open and inclusive policy framework with several institutional channels and mechanisms • Tasked to improve the coordination of regional cooperation • Based on the principle of equality of the partners • Pragmatic nature: actual work has proceeded within the confines of the partnerships: • The Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP) • The Northern Dimension Partnership on Health and Social Affairs (NDPHS) • The Northern Dimension Partnership on Transport and Logistics (NDPTL); • The Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture (NDPC) • Has a steering group of senior officials rather than summits, Business Forum, Parliamentary Forum, and Northern Dimension Institute • Part of CBSS work now coordinated with ND, NCM supports health and social work of the ND – ND’s relevance growing • In the ND EU represents all of its 27 member states unlike the more technical nature of the Commission level representation in the CBSS, BEAC; EU and Russia ’big’ and run the show

9. Evaluation of the 1990s ’regionalisation’ thesis (I) • ‘Regionalisation’ is a question of different geopolitical models • Joenniemi 1993: a ‘concentric Europe’ may co-exist with a regionalized order • This is possible because both models part from the allegedly weakening bond between the state and nation, and because the EU itself supports both ‘universalizing’ Brussels-centred policies, and subsidiarity-based regionalizing policies • Joenniemi 1995: regionalization emerging in particular through the EU’s new Committee of Regions and formation of BSR/BEAC; yet, concomitant limits to regionalization in Europe • Many authors second on how actions of states within the region undermine prospects of bottom-up regionalization • Joenniemi and Browning 2004: EU-concentredness is the defining feature of northern Europe’s post-Cold War development. In their view, focusing only on Brussels-centred processes obscures the possibility of the formation of other competing places of importance: ‘margins’ may position themselves between the centre and their own marginality, thus creating new political spaces like witnessed in the multi-level region-building in northern Europe since the early 1990s

10. Evaluation of the 1990s ’regionalisation’ thesis (II) • Hubel 2004: BSR becoming a European sub-region rather than a distinct region of its own, or a ‘laboratory’ of political experiments. In this scheme, main determining factors come partly from the inside and mostly outside: • (West) European integration • Transatlantic relations and the continued importance of NATO (esp. DEN, NOR, Baltic states and POL) • Developments within the Nordic states and post-Soviet space • Hubel’s vision of a European sub-region shaped by externalities implies a traditional-geopolitical view where NE is defined from the outside! Yet this is a powerful contra-argument to the regionalization thesis • English School perspective: NE immersed into the EU international society due to the fact that it mostly embodies the same institutions/principles and has relatively little independence from wider EU-Europe at that plane • World political perspective: Russia now a BRIC, regionalisation has to stay within the ‘limits’ as Russia’s strategic focus is elsewhere • Regionalization continues to be a powerful tool if we focus on regional organizations per se, or on twinning and other programmes between north European cities, co-operation among regions across borders, etc. • Practical lessons: regional co-op ‘learning by doing: • Cultural and historical differences play a role; trust and personal contacts • Technical/expert level issues often easy to promote; finding common interests key • Financial and intellectual asymmetries hinder co-op • The very different federal structure in Russia (vs. FIN, GER)