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Christian Frank
Professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain
Secrétaire Général de TEPSA

The Northen Dimension: Added Value or Redundancy?

Rovaniemi, September 1997; Llulissat (Greenland), August 2002: until now, the story of the Northern Dimension exercise has stretched between these two dates. Addressing the conference on “Barents region today”, the Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen exposed in September 1997 that “the European Union needs a Northern Dimension”, which would extend from Iceland to the North-West of Russia and from the Barents Sea to the South of the Baltic Sea.The Finnish proposal intended to sketch a global approach which would stimulate the EU existing policies and programs for the region, coordinate them with the actions of the regional bodies like the Council of Baltic Sea States and the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, and include Russia, more specifically its North-West part, in a wide array of civil cooperation activities. In a letter sent to the then president of the European Commission Jacques Santer, Paavo Lipponen presented his proposal like “a Strategy for covering the whole Northern Dimension”, strategy which was to define and to promote the long term economic, political and security interests of the Union in this area . In terms of security however, the Finnish initiative left aside the military aspects and targeted only the “soft security” effects of a multisectoral functional cooperation.

From the Rovaniemi speech to the Llulissat meeting, the Northern Dimension has been shaped through European Council’s conclusions, European Commission’s reports and finally the Feira Action Plan. Beside the Mediterranean Dimension based on the 1995 Barcelona Declaration, the Central and Eastern Europe Dimension which is leading to the wide enlargement of the Union, beside the Western Balkans stabilisation and association process too, the Northern Dimension exercise provides the “missing concept” in the EU management of its “near abroad”. Relations with Norway and Iceland based on the EEA (European Economic Area) agreements, with the Baltic States and with Poland which are close to accession, and with Russia, more specifically its North-Western part, and Kaliningrad are thus included in a wide global approach. By contrast however with the other neighbouring relationships, the Northern Dimension is grounded neither on specific agreements nor on specific budget lines. It provides an umbrella for the existing policies. It should stimulate coordination and consistency between EU internal and external activities as well as cooperation with non-EU partners, states or regional organisations. By summing up what it is already working, does the Northern Dimension bring an added value or does it provide cosmetic redundancy?

From Rovaniemi to Feira

Before assessing the Northern Dimension, it is useful to remind about the various stages of its shaping and of its implementation. The 1997 Finnish proposal did not happen in a pure vacuum. In 1994, the European Commission had already issued a communication entitled “Orientations for a Union approach towards the Baltic Sea region”. Backed by the Council, the Commission launched afterwards a “Baltic Sea Region Initiative” which was to create synergies between the EU internal and external policies in the Baltic zone and to cross them with the actions undertaken by the non-EU actors, namely by the Council of the Baltic Sea States.

The Finnish initiative of September 1997 borrowed the methodology of the Commission’s “Baltic Sea Region Initiative”. It proposed to bring into a global approach the existing multisectoral functional cooperation, without calling for either new institutional framework or supplementary budgetary resources. But the Lipponen’s speech aimed at extending the Baltic approach up to the Euro-Artic zone, at stressing the importance of including Russia in such a global cooperative process. It upgraded politically what the Commission had initiated, by transforming the “Baltic initiative” into a geopolitical dimension of the EU external policy, making the Northern Dimension complementary to the Mediterranean, the Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans ones by which the EU manages its neighbouring relations at its external borders.

According to Hanna Ojanen, researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the Rovaniemi speech of the Prime Minister Lipponen was a way for the Finnish Government to instrumentalize the EU policies for pursuing its main foreign policy goal: a cooperative relationship with Russia. By sharing with the Union what is at stake in this relation, Ojanen wrote, “Finland has sought support for its national politics and economics interests - particularly in the fields of energy, transport and investment - and security, above all regarding nuclear safety, environmental threats, organised crime and illegal immigration”. By bringing the Union closer to the Finnish foreign policy concerns, the Lipponen proposal may also have had the side effect of increasing the legitimacy of the European Union to the Finnish people.

By providing a missing concept in the EU external policy towards its neighbourhood, without worrying the net contributors to the EU budget, since the Northern Dimension did not request any new budget line, the Finnish initiative has gained the support of the EU partners. Since the European Council of Luxembourg in December 1997, all the European summits have mentioned and supported it in their conclusions.

In November 1999, the Finnish government, which holds the presidency of the Union, gathered in Helsinki the EU Member States and the non-EU partners to the Northern Dimension: the Baltic States, Norway, Iceland, Poland and the Russian Federation. It was the first time that these were invited to share their views with the EU States on the topics of the Northern Dimension. Although the Helsinki conference was at ministerial level, the EU foreign ministers, except the Finnish, abstained from coming due to the context of the second Chechnya war. The conference mandated the European Commission to prepare an Action Plan for the period 2000-2003. In June 2000, the European Council in Feira endorsed the “Action plan for the Northern Dimension in the external and transborder policies of the European Union”.

The “Feira Action Plan” acts as a political recommendation which is to inspire the policies and the programs of the Union, under a continuous process, but without specific financing. The priority is given to the following sectorss: environment, nuclear safety, energy, human and scientific resources, fight against the organised crime and the traffic of human beings. Transports and telecommunications are also on the list. Special stress is put on interdependence with Russia and with Kaliningrad. The cross-border cooperation is high on the agenda, pressing the Commission for making compatible the projects funded by the Regional Fund (which are of internal use like the Interreg programs) with the TACIS or PHARE projects for third countries.

To make less abstract the generalities about the Feira Action Plan, we may look on a more concrete way at some illustrations concerning Russia. In the field of environment, we may quote, for example, a Tacis project of water supply and waste water management in Karelia and a waste management in Kaliningrad. For nuclear safety, there are “On site assistance to nuclear power plants” in the region of Leningrad and in the Kola Peninsula. The study of the interconnection between the EU and the Russian electricity networks illustrates the energy cooperation which is also dealing with the enhancement of security of gas supply. The shortening of the travelling time for the high speed train project between Helsinki and St. Petersburg is a project in the field of transport. The control of communicable diseases is the priority for the health sector. Cross-border economic cooperation between Karelia and its Finnish regional counterpart is to be implemented.

Provisional assessment

Does the ND really bring an added value to the policies and programs already performed through the existing agreements and programs? The answer could hardly be firmly positive. According to the Feira Action Plan’s wording, the added value should stem from a better coordination and a better complementarity which would strengthen the consistency of a global approach to address the specific problems and needs of the North as well as to develop its potentialities. From what we may know, better coordination between the EU programs doesn’t seem to have happened. As there is no cross-funding between internal programs like those of the European Regional Development Fund and external programs like those of Phare or Tacis, their cross-border interoperability remains weak. In terms of complementarity with the non-EU actors, namely the Baltic Sea States Council and the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, the ND has not scored better.

Does it finally mean that the ND brings mainly cosmetic redundancy, something which is attractive in words but deprived of operational substance? For being partially correct, this opinion should not be fully conclusive. If the ND does not produce operational efficiency, it nevertheless may increase the political awareness of the EU member sates and institutions that a region, which has deemed so far from the European Community at the time of the Cold War and in the golden age of the EFTA, is becoming an important part of the new wide European Area. Instead of focusing on the Added value – Redundancy dilemma which accounts only into gross results, it is finally more pertinent to consider how the Northern Dimension is perceived by the actors and which utilities, even marginal, it afford to them. Some Russian perceptions on the ND have been reflected in Vladimir Baranovsky's book: “Russia’s attitude towards the EU”, and in Igor Leshukov’s article : “Can the ND break the vicious circle of Russia-EU relations”, both issued in the set of publications devoted to the ND by the Finnish Institute for International Relations and the Berlin Institüt für Europaïsche Politik. I rely on them to sketch some Russian views.

It may be asserted that the ND is less important for Moscow than the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement and the EU Common Strategy on Russia. It refers only to the Northwest part of Russia and focuses on multisectorial functional cooperation with soft security effects. Large part of the Russian territory and ‘high politics’ issues are left aside. Another reason why Moscow looks at the ND on a mitigated way is that, by emphasizing the importance of energy in terms of gas supply and oil transit, the ND is to keep the asymmetry in trade by consolidating the weight of the raw materials (around 50%) in the Russian exports to the EU while the EU sells mainly manufactured goods and technology to Russia. But some positive aspects may also be taken into consideration from the Russia viewpoint. Nuclear safety is high on the ND agenda and the contribution the EU can afford, through its European Atomic Energy competences, for securing the nuclear plants and the treatment of the nuclear waste, is to be welcomed.

In the future, EU-Russia cooperation for exploring and exploiting the Euro-Arctic zone may prove to be of mutual profit. Another positive element is that it is in the framework of the ND that the Union has put Kaliningrad on its agenda since May 1999, anticipating the idea put forward by the Russian Mid-term strategy to make of Kaliningrad a “pilot region” for the EU-Russia cooperation. Finally, as Leshukov points out, the ND could also become attractive for St. Petersburg and the Oblasts of the Northern Russia, provided that Moscow allows the regional authorities to grasp the opportunities of cross border cooperation with EU counterparts.

For what regards the EU, it may be firstly questioned why the ND has not been shaped like a Common Strategy according to the Amsterdam Treaty provisions. When he informed Jacques Santer about the ND, the Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen presented it like a strategy for the EU. The Amsterdam Treaty makes of the “common strategy” the most comprehensive CFSP instrument which is to address “areas where the Members States have important interests in common”. At the first sight, the ND might have been fitting within this definition. The reason why it has not been shaped like a “common strategy” is probably that, limited to soft security concerns, its CFSP component was too light as it left aside the political dialogue on “high politics” issues like military security and disarmament. Traditionally, the EU member states who have the strongest ties which foreign areas have been the mains promoters of the EU policies with their privileged third countries. So it was for the Yaoundé and Lomé Conventions with the African countries. France, Italy and Spain have been the main protagonists of the Barcelona process. Not surprisingly, the Nordic countries are the main promoters of the Northern Dimension where their foreign policy and the EU external relations merge their common goals. Even if Sweden may have occasionally prioritised the role of the Baltic States Council over that of the EU, there are the three EU Nordic presidencies, Finland in 1999, Sweden in 2001 and Denmark today which have given the strongest impulse to the Northern Dimension. Provided it would not divert resources from other EU foreign policies, the other Member States have agreed on its conceptual utility. In Llulissat, the Danish European Affairs Minister Bertel Haarder admitted that the Nordic countries are keener to the Northern Dimension than, for example, Greece and Italy which will hold the next presidencies. But he hoped that the second Action Plan might be adopted in June or December 2003, suggesting that the decision about the Northern Dimension could bring some fresh air in such heated cities like Athens and Rome.

Bibliography

1. Conseil de l’Union européenne, Dimension septentrionale. Plan d’Action pour la Dimension septentrionale dans les politiques extérieures et transfrontalières de l’Union européenne 2000-2003, 14 juin 2000, document 9401/00.

2. Baranovsky Vladimir, Russia’s Attitudes Towards the EU: Political Aspects, Helsinki, Ulkopoliittinen instituutti, Berlin, Institut für Europäische Politik, 2002.

3. Leshukov Igor, “Can the Northern Dimension Break the Vicious Circle of Russia-EU Relations?”, in Hanna Ojanen (ed.), The Northern Dimension: Fuel for the EU ?, Helsinki, Ulkopoliittinen instituutti, Berlin, Institut für Europäische Politik, 2001, pp. 118-141.

4. Ojanen Hanna, “How to Customize Your Union: Finland and the ‘Northern Dimension’ of the EU”, in Northern Dimensions. Yearbook 1999, The Finnish Institute of International Relations, 1999, pp.13-26.