Stefan Gänzle

EU Governance and the European Neighbourhood Policy: A Framework for Analysis

SINCE 2002 THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) HAS SOUGHT to flesh out a proximity policy to deal with its immediate vicinity in the light of EU Eastern enlargement. Several labels, such as ‘Eastern (and Southern) Dimension’, ‘Wider Europe’, ‘European Neighbourhood Policy’ (ENP), ‘ENP plus’ and, eventually—with regards to East European countries outside the EU—‘Eastern Partnership’ have been used to capture the EU’s policy vis-à-vis its different neighbours. So far, Algeria, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Armenia, Jordan, Syria, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Ukraine, Egypt, Moldova, Georgia and Morocco have been recognised as ‘ENP partner’ countries. The ENP subscribes to a number of core principles. First, it is built into the existing framework of bilateral relations between the EU and each of the ENP partner countries although the EU is eager to maintain that the policy is multilateral in terms of its design. Thus, Partnership and Cooperation Agreements, sketched out in the first half of the 1990s to cater to the needs of states of the former Soviet Union, as well as the classical Association Agreements with the Mediterranean countries, have provided the platform for the ENP to date. Second, the ENP is framed as a process of ‘joint ownership’ or ‘co-ownership’ which is ‘based on the awareness of shared values and common interests’ and by which the ‘EU does not seek to impose priorities or conditions on its partners’ (European Commission 2004a, p. 8). Although it is not

The European Union and Global Development: An ‘Enlightened Superpower’ in the Making?

The uneven distribution of the benefits of globalisation — most recently demonstrated by the financial and economic crisis — challenges the idea of a global balance between the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing world’. China and other emerging economies, for example, have taken action to support European financial stabilisation, including buying the bonds of Euro-zone countries which are at the centre of the sovereign debt crisis. The relationship between these constituent parts of the world — developed countries on the one hand and non-developed as well as developing countries on the other — is no longer about the contrast ‘just’ between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, or the widening gap between these two groups. It is becoming more complex with a differentiation within the group of developing nations itself: some countries, such as China, Brazil and India, have managed to catch up on economic development compared to ‘Western’ standards, whereas the development prospects of others, in particular those of the ‘Bottom Billion’ (Collier, 2007), appear ‘to be trapped’.1 In this world of less clear-cut distinctions and increasing uncertainties, there seems to be a need to refine the relationship between the developed world, emerging economies and poor countries, while ensuring the possibility for all to develop in a sustainable manner.

Introduction: Transnational Governance and Policy-Making in the Baltic Sea Region

Analytical frames such as ‘sub-’, ‘macro-’ or ‘meso-region’ (Christiansen 1997) have been coined in order to capture the Baltic Sea area as a geographical space that constitutes an ‘intermediary level between the ‘‘national’’ and the ‘‘regional’’’ (Johansson 2002, p. 373). Without denying that characteristics of cultural, economic and political distinctiveness persist, the above-mentioned conceptual lenses clearly emphasize that, over time, unifying elements have prevailed in Europe’s Baltic subregion. Since the end of the Cold War sub-regional initiatives have mushroomed in and around Europe providing for cooperative arrangements in smaller geographic settings, such as the Baltic, the Barents, the Arctic and the Black Sea regions (see Cottey 1999). According to Johansson (2002), these arrangements are primarily geared towards the management of problems and challenges which all neighboring countries or communities share in common. It is not only noteworthy that most of these initiatives have emerged in the immediate vicinity of seas, lakes or river systems (like the Danube Commission), but also most of these arrangements materialize at the fringes of larger regional entities, such as the European Union. It is for that reason that the Baltic Sea region has been described as a peripheral subregion which links Europe’s key regions: the European Union (including the Nordic non-EU states) and the Russian Federation (Hubel and Gänzle 2002, pp. 253f.). However, in the aftermath of the EU’s Eastern enlargement the Baltic Sea has moved much more towards the center of political gravity in Europe and effectively turned the Baltic Sea into an internal EU sea, with the exception of Russia. The Baltic Sea hosts a highly vulnerable eco-system and provides the common link between the Baltic rim states: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden. A key challenge all these littoral states seem to face is the fact that these states border one of the most polluted seas in the world.

The European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region

The EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR), which was presented by the European Commission in June 2009, is the first macro-regional strategy of the EU. In the words of the EU Commissioner for Regional Policy, Johannes Hahn, it was designed to serve as a ‘new model for co-operation’ and ‘to inspire other regions’ (Hahn, 2010, 2) in Europe. From this perspective, the EUSBSR has certainly provided some ‘inspirational successes’, almost triggering a veritable ‘macro-regional fever’ (Duhr, 2011, 3) amongst EU members and partner countries, and pushing the number of countries currently involved in the formulation of macro-regional strategies to 27.1 The EUSBSR targets eight EU member states — Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany, that is, the German Lander of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Hamburg — and also two partner countries (the Russian Federation and Norway) (Figure 6.1); hence, it can almost be conceived as an internal strategy of the EU (European Commission, 2009). In contrast, both the EU Strategy for the Danube Region and the EU Strategy for the Adriatic-Ionian Region are far more diverse in membership and exhibit a strong external focus (see Ganzle, forthcoming; Agh, chapter 7, Cugusi and Stocchiero, chapter 8 this volume).

Macro-regional strategies of the European Union (EU) and experimentalist design of multi-level governance: the case of the EU strategy for the Danube region

ABSTRACT Placed within EU Cohesion policy and its objective of European territorial cooperation, macro-regional strategies of the European Union (EU) aim to improve functional cooperation and coherence across policy sectors at different levels of governance, involving both member and partner states, as well as public and private actors from the subnational level and civil society in a given ‘macro-region’. In forging a ‘macro-regional’ approach, the EU commits to only using existing legislative frameworks, financial programmes and institutions. By applying the analytical lens of multi-level and experimentalist governance (EG), and using the EU Strategy for the Danube Region as a case, this article shows that ‘macro-regional’ actors have been activated at various scales and locked in a recursive process of EG. In order to make the macro-regional experiment sustainable, it will be important to ensure that monitoring and comparative review of implementation experience functions effectively and that partner countries, subnational authorities and civil societies have a voice in what is, by and large, an intergovernmental strategy.

The Security–Development Nexus in European Union Foreign Relations after Lisbon: Policy Coherence at Last?

One of the 2009 Lisbon Treatys objectives was to enhance the coherence of EU-level foreign relations by improving collective action. Policy-level innovations included ‘comprehensive’ and ‘joined-up’ approaches linking EU instruments and actors, especially the Commission and the new European External Action Service. Have these reforms improved policy coherence? We focus on a key EU policy domain illustrating Europes engagement with the changing global context: the security–development nexus. Although we find that collective action has improved somewhat since 2010, decision-making is affected by bureaucratic actors catering to specific constituencies. Accordingly, the coherence of security and development policies remains challenged. The EU institutions lack strategic direction, which is unavoidable in a system that lacks clear hierarchy.

Macro-regional Strategies, Cohesion Policy and Regional Cooperation in the European Union : Towards a Research Agenda

Since 2009, the European Union has developed strategies for the Baltic Sea, Danube, Adriatic-Ionian and Alpine macro-regions. These macro-regional strategies represent a new tool of European Union governance that seeks to combine the community’s territorial cooperation and cohesion policy repertoire with intergovernmental ‘regional cooperation’ involving European Union member and partner countries. By establishing comprehensive governance architectures for cross-sectoral and trans-boundary policy coordination in areas such as transport infrastructure and environmental protection, macro-regional strategies seek to mobilise European Union member and non-member states alike in promoting and harmonising territorial and trans-governmental cooperation. Both the macro-regional strategies and the macro-regions themselves have been met with increasing interest across several disciplines, including geography, regional planning, political science and public administration, triggering questions and debates on issues such as their impacts on existing practices of territorial cooperation and their relation to previously established forms of regional cooperation. Authored by scholars based in the above-mentioned fields of study, this contribution seeks to take stock of research on the subject to date, reflect on conceptual starting points and highlight new directions for future research in the political sciences.

From ‘Awkward Partner’ to ‘Awkward Partnership’? Explaining Norway’s Paradoxical Relations with the European Union

Norway is the only Nordic state to have rejected membership of the European Union four times. Applying the conceptual lens of ‘awkwardness’, as developed by Murray et al. (2014), it seems fair to consider the country as an awkward partner in the process of European integration. As a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), however, Norway has been tightly associated with the European Union ever since 1994, actively participating in a large number of EU policies and programs and effectively forging a close partnership that has in itself become increasingly ‘awkward’. This holds true despite the fact that successive Norwegian governments have recently started to embrace a generally more reserved attitude with regard to the EU, particularly in relation to the implementation of several EU directives. As a member of both Nordic and European cooperation, Norway aims at dissipating potential concerns for being perceived as awkward—despite the complexities created by its non-membership of the EU. We argue that Norwegian ‘awkwardness’ has resulted in an awkward’ relationship between Norway and the EU that is predominantly rooted in the domestic political sphere (relations between Norwegian political elites and the electorate, and among the political parties), although this has also been shaped by the EU’s incapacity to deal with a series of economic and political crises over the past few years.

Macro-regional strategies of the European Union, Russia and multilevel governance in northern Europe

When the first macro-regional strategy of the European Union (EU) – the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) – was launched in 2009, the then Commissioner for Regional Policy, Paweł Samecki, described it as a ‘new animal,’ presenting something entirely different and allowing the EU to coordinate its policies in the region in a ‘new modern way’ (quoted by Joenniemi 2010, 33). His successor, Johannes Hahn, went even one step further and argued that the EUSBSR was designed to serve as a ‘new model for co-operation’ and aimed ‘to inspire other regions’ (Hahn 2010, 2) in Europe. Hahn’s successor in office, Corina Creţu, eventually was again more prosaic by describing the Strategy’s raison d’être as a way for EU member states ‘to pool their resources together and find joint solution to common challenges’ (Creţu 2015, 4). Still, since the endorsement of the EUSBSR, other ‘macro-regions’ have started to self-identify and are currently at different stages of development. The European Council – the Union’s gathering of heads of states and governments – has since endorsed the EU Strategies for the Danube and Adriatic–Ionian regions in 2011 and 2014, respectively; the EU’s Strategy for the Alpine Region was finally approved in 2015. As a consequence of this ‘macro-regional fever’ (Dühr 2011, 3), all but nine EU member states – Belgium, Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom – are engaged in a ‘macro-regional adventure’ of sorts – some countries even in three, such as Slovenia and Germany – together with a significant number of non-EU partner countries that are considered part of a given macro-region (see Gänzle and Kern 2016 for a comprehensive overview). While the EU Strategies for the Danube and Adriatic–Ionian regions include a large number of non-EU countries (such as Ukraine and Moldova in the Danube, and Montenegro and Albania in the Adriatic–Ionian), the view of the initiators of the EUSBSR was ‘that Russia should only be informed and associated through existing institutional structures, in particular the so-called ‘Northern Dimension’’ (Ahner 2016, ix). The ‘Northern Dimension’ is an EU initiative that was launched in 1999 with the aim of reconciling EU regional and external policies in northeastern Europe and constructing a framework for multilateral cooperation including, in particular, the Russian Federation; eventually, in 2006, it was decided to turn the ‘Northern Dimension’ into a common policy of the EU, Iceland, Norway, and the Russian

The European Union’s Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR): improving multilevel governance in Baltic Sea cooperation?

ABSTRACT Macro-regional strategies – such as the ones for the Baltic Sea, the Danube, the Ionian-Adriatic, and the Alpine regions – constitute new elements of European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy and territorial cooperation. In a nutshell, these strategies aim at building functional and transnational ‘macro-regions’ involving the EU, its member states, as well as partner countries within the EU’s system of multilevel governance (MLG). As the oldest macro-regional strategy, the EU Strategy of the Baltic Sea Region has been in operation since 2009. Drawing on the theory of MLG, this contribution assesses the effects on the political mobilization and interplay between international, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental actors in the region.