49
There is no consensus in academia about who the real founding fathers were, and where
exactly to allocate the starting point of Baltic Sea Regionalism. Williams identified
ideas about the creation of a New Baltic Sea Region as early as in 1988, when Björn
Engholm, then social-democratic Prime Minister of the German Bundesland Schleswig-
Holstein, launched the vision of building up a cooperative network across the Baltic by
reviving the spirit of the old historic Hanseatic League (“New Hansa”) in the form of a
“Baltic Forum”.126 However, the development of Baltic Sea Regionalism in this early
period was nothing of a clear process of progressive and controlled regionalisation.
There were many parallel and partly diverging region-building projects that
characterised the phase between 1989 and 1995.
II. The Irony of Competition I
The emergence of Baltic Sea Regionalism in the early 1990s has been accompanied by a
fervent and enthusiastic rhetoric about the positive dynamics of new Baltic
‘togetherness’ that were to transcend historic dividing lines. The emerging regionalist
dynamics that shaped the post Cold War phase in Northern Europe have often been
referred to as a “wave of cooperative spirit” or a “rush of togetherness.”127 What has
hardly entered the public and academic debate is that this enthusiasm, which in a certain
sense unified the wide range of initiatives and region-building projects, actually built on
very different grounds. The specific circumstances that can be identified in the BSR
case call for a more differentiated perspective. The various newly established
associations and projects did not only strive for innovation and proactive originality but
also had specific strategic objectives. In some cases, these newly appearing regional
entities resulted in the creation of a series of different and potentially competing visions
of spatial prototypes, each building on specific normative foundations and different
ideological and societal perceptions. The most prominent example in this regard is
closely related to the above-mentioned “Baltic Forum” initiative by Björn Engholm,
then social-democratic Prime Minister of the German Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein,
and the establishment of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS). Engholm had
envisaged the creation of some sort of coordinating platform to embrace all cooperative
activities in the BSR. At first his initiative found fertile soil, most importantly among
Swedish and Northern-German scholars.
This group of actors was determined to create a post-modern paradigm, in which the nationstate was gradually to lose importance and new forms of interaction, based on networking
and people-to-people contact, should take over. It was seen as a region-building experiment,
where the actors obviously had their own interests but were joining forces in order to reach
a synergetic effect.128
126 See WILLIAMS Leena-Kaarina: Post-modern and intergovernmental paradigms of Baltic Sea cooperation between 1988 and 1992. The Genesis of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) as a
historical case study. In: NORDEUROPA Forum 1/2005, pp. 3-20, here p. 4-5.
127 See e.g. ANTOLA Esko/KIVIKARI Urpo: The Baltic Sea Region. A Dynamic Third of Europe.
Turku 2004.
128 WILLIAMS Leena-Kaarina: Post-modern and intergovernmental paradigms of Baltic Sea cooperation between 1988 and 1992. The Genesis of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) as a
historical case study. In: NORDEUROPA Forum 1/2005, pp. 3-20, here p. 5.
50
However, Engholm’s “model of open participation” had only little in common with a
state-level construct. He rather aimed at the establishment of a multi-centric network, a
de-centralised forum for various societal groups.
The Baltic Forum was to be pragmatic and consensus-oriented. Practical questions should
have priority over the fundamental and institutional concerns of international politics. Cooperation should be flexible, open and not prone to rigid hierarchical structures, the main
goal being societal dialogue, not political integration. Therefore, the institution should
represent a forum for different societal groups instead of governments.129
Engholm’s “New Hansa” initiative was thwarted by a parallel, more traditionally
oriented intergovernmental construction. Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Uffe Ellemann-
Jensen, then liberal foreign ministers of Germany and Denmark, initiated and
encouraged the establishment of the CBSS as a state-level umbrella association that was
to facilitate and promote cooperation and coordination among the Baltic Sea littoral
states including Norway.130 Beforehand, Genscher had been reported to have
complained about Engholm’s proposal, as he perceived it to infringe the federal state
prerogatives in foreign policy.131
According to Williams’ interpretation, the final construction of the CBSS eventually
met many criteria of the ‘old style’ regionalism even though it was actually part of the
alleged ‘new’ regionalist wave in the BSR, following the decline of the Soviet empire.
While Engholm’s vision of a ‘Baltic Forum’ was more of a model for “open
participation” that was to involve all different types of official and non-official actors
(civil society, NGOs, sub-regional entities) and thus, very much complied with the
typology of ‘New Regionalism’, the structural concept of the CBSS was more
formalistic and state-centric. It was designed according to strictly intergovernmental
logics, with e.g. its main decision-making body, the Committee of Senior Officials
(CSO), being recruited from the member-state Ministries of Foreign Affairs. Williams
identified yet another aspect that brought the CBSS concept closer to the ‘old’ idea of
regionalism.
The main difference to the initial ideas proposed by Slesvig-Holstein [note: the Baltic
Forum] was not only that the activities had been shifted to the intergovernmental level, but
that they had been shifted to give a stronger focus on ‘development aid’ for the Baltic
States, and thus formulated in the wording of classical foreign policy.132
Engholm failed to keep his image of being the founding father of Baltic Sea
Regionalism as his ‘new style’ project was eventually displaced by the formalistic and
‘old style’ counterpart – the CBSS. Williams mentions one last attempt to “counteract
the intergovernmentalism of the CBSS.” This time it was not a political initiative but an
idea emerging from an academic background. Joenniemi and Wæver, two Nordic
researchers, proposed the creation of a “Confederation of Baltic Sea Regions” with
129 Ibd., here p. 14.
130 Iceland joined the CBSS in 1995.
131 See STÅLVANT Carl-Einar: The Council of the Baltic Sea States. In: COTTEY Andrew (ed.):
Subregional Cooperation in the New Europe. Building Security, Prosperity from the Barents to the
Black Sea. London/New York 1998, pp. 46-68, here p. 56.
132 WILLIAMS Leena-Kaarina: Post-modern and intergovernmental paradigms of Baltic Sea cooperation between 1988 and 1992. The Genesis of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) as a
historical case study. In: NORDEUROPA Forum 1/2005, pp. 3-20, here p. 17.
51
loose structures, voluntary membership and a flexible agenda. Anyway, just as the
Baltic Forum, this version of a ‘new style’ regionalist formation never took shape. At
the time it was presented to the public, in summer 1992, the CBSS had already been
established as the model case of Baltic Sea regionalist cooperation. Looking at these
inner-German events, two ‘German’ factors can be identified that dominated the
“construction phase” of Baltic Sea Regionalism:133
– German party-politics; most importantly, disputes between social democrats and
liberals;
– internal struggles between the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein and the German
Foreign Ministry.
This study does not intend to focus on the specific role and importance of domestic
discourse within the single states involved in the process of post-1989 regionalism.
However, these observations help to characterise the general course of events in the
BSR. This example gives important information about how Baltic Sea Regionalism
evolved in its early stages, to what extent individual players shaped the development of
cooperative links in the region. Interestingly, the emergence of the new inclusive ‘Baltic
Sea Region’ occurred in a highly competitive political atmosphere. There is a certain
degree of irony in the fact that instead of pooling the efforts in order to achieve common
or at least very similar goals, some region-builders decided to mingle their regionalist
ambitions with trite every day politics. However, this sort of competition between
different region-building projects might have contributed to the number and variety of
cooperative formations present in the region of today. While in the case of Engholm’s
Baltic Forum, an innovative regionalist vision has actually been outperformed by its
intergovernmental counterpart, in other cases, these dynamics might have inspired the
creation of a parallel and competing region-building project. Today, the BSR allows
both functional overlap and constructive competition.
III. The Council of the Baltic Sea States
The CBSS was founded in 1992 under the overall objective to create a regional forum
for dialogue and coordination between the national governments of the Baltic Sea
States. The establishment of the CBSS was based on a Danish-German initiative
launched Genscher and Ellemann-Jensen, then liberal foreign ministers of Germany and
Denmark.134
133 See ibd., here p. 5 and 18.
134 Catellani points out that the role of the Danish foreign minister was less proactive than it might have
appeared. The fact that the CBSS was launched right after a bilateral meeting held in Copenhagen
did support the impression that Denmark had been the driving force behind the initiative. “Uffe
Ellemann Jensen [...] contributed substantially both to the creation of the CBSS and to the
development of a more assertive stand by Denmark within the framework of the European
integration process. However, the importance of his activism should not be overestimated, especially
in the light of the role Germany played in connection with the launch of the initiative.” Genscher in
turn was bound by the consideration that a German initiative in the BSR involving Russia as a
partner would have appeared inappropriate for the geopolitical allocation of Germany in the New
Europe. See CATELLANI Nicola: The EU’s Northern Dimension. Testing a New Approach to
Neighbourhood Relations? Utrikespolitiska Institutet, Research Report 35, Stockholm 2003, p. 5.
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References
Zusammenfassung
Seit 1989 ist es im Ostseeraum zu einer explosionsartigen Entstehung einer Vielzahl von regionalen Initiativen und Zusammenschlüssen gekommen. Der Ostseeraum weist bis heute eine europaweit einzigartig hohe Konzentration an kooperativen regionalen Strukturen auf. Diese bilden gemeinsam ein enges Netzwerk von Vereinigungen, die unter dem Überbegriff der "Ostseezusammenarbeit’ interagieren.
Diese Studie analysiert die Hintergründe dieses regionalen Phänomens oder so genannten „Ostsee-Rätsels“ auf Basis eines Vergleichs zwischen den Regionalpolitiken zweier staatlicher Schlüsselakteure, Schweden und Finnland, wobei der europäische Integrationsprozess als übergeordneter Bezugsrahmen für die Untersuchung dient.