Transcript The European North: Historical Geopolitics and

Europe’s North: Historical Geopolitics and International
Institutional Dynamics, 2-5 ECTS
2. 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 [email protected]
<http://www.uta.fi/jkk/jmc/index.html>
The idea of a regionalised (northern)
Europe/Baltic Sea region (BSR) of the 1990s
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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.
Geopolitical visions of European regionalisation
Europe of regions: a mosaic
of political agents and
subjectivities, where regions
and cities form nonWestphalian 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
BSR
West/Atlantic
Centre
South
East
Council of the Baltic
Sea States (CBSS)
and the EU
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15th CBSS Ministerial
Session, Elsinore 4th June
2009
<http://www.cbss.org/co
mponent/option,com_rsga
llery2/Itemid,130/gid,1/p
age,inline/view,inline/
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
Nordic Council of Ministers
(NCM), Barents Euro-Arctic
Council (BEAC) and EU
involvement
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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 cooperation, 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
Further ’europeanization’ of regional cooperation
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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 regionwide 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.
Renewed Northern Dimension (ND) of the EU,
Iceland, Norway and Russia
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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
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Based on the principle of equality of the partners
Pragmatic nature: actual work has proceeded within the confines
of the partnerships:
• The Northern
• The Northern
(NDPHS)
• The Northern
(NDPTL);
• The Northern
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Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP)
Dimension Partnership on Health and Social Affairs
Dimension Partnership on Transport and Logistics
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
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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
The Northern Dimension Structure
Non-governmental level
Governmental Level
Participants
4 ND Partners
EU, Russia, Norway, Iceland
Ministerial
meetings
SOM
/
Senior Officials
Meeting
Steering group
4 Partnerships
AC
Arctic Council
NDPTL
ND Partnership on Transport and
Logistics
NDPC
ND Partnership on Culture
NDEP
ND Environmental Partnership
ND Parliamentary
Forum
NDPHS
NDBC
ND Business Council
ND Partnership in Public Health and
Social Well-Being
NDI
ND Institute
4 Participants
BEAC
Barents Euro-Arctic Council
CBSS
Council of the Baltic Sea States
NCM
Nordic Council of Ministers
EBRD,
EIB,
NEFCO,
NIB
International Financial Institutions
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Evaluation of the 1990s
’regionalisation’ thesis (I)
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‘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
Evaluation of the 1990s ’regionalisation’ thesis (II)
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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:
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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)