A Northern Dimension for EU policies

Holger Moroff
Research fellow, Department of Political Science, University of Osnabrck (Germany)
This article has been built upon research conducted within the framework a
DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) project on the Common Foreign and
Security Policy of the EU.

The Northern Dimension (ND) of the EU is a generic term which encompasses all activities of
the Union in the Northern Dimension area, whether as part of the enlargement process, as for
Poland and the three Baltic republics, or within the European Economic Area, as for Norway
and Iceland, or finally and most importantly, as part of its foreign policy towards Russia
including its assistance programme Tacis (Technical Assistance for the Commonwealth of
Independent States), the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) and the Unions
Common Strategy on Russia (CSR). It thus forms the brackets around the Unions softsecurity policies in the region.

The Luxembourg European Council in December 1997 endorsed the idea of an EU policy for
the Northern Dimension and requested that the Commission prepare an outline for such a
policy. In November 1998, an interim report was published as a Commission Communication
on a Northern Dimension for the policies of the Union, identifying six areas where the EU
could provide added value, namely, in the fields of energy, environmental and nuclear safety,
cross-border cooperation, trade, transport, telecommunications and health. The succeeding
Vienna European Council endorsed the report and invited the General Affairs Council of the
foreign ministers to prepare guidelines for the implementation of the ND. In June 1999, these
guidelines were endorsed at the Cologne European Council and the following policy fields
were counted among those for possible EU contribution: natural resources, infrastructure
(including transport, telecommunications and energy), environment, nuclear safety, education,
research, training, human resources development, public health and social administration. It
was agreed to call a ministerial meeting on the ND during the subsequent Finnish presidency.
That meeting took place in November 1999 in Helsinki, where member states were
represented, along with the seven partner countries, as they are officially called, which are not
EU members: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Russian Federation, Poland, Norway and
Iceland. An Inventory of current activities under the Northern Dimension was adopted, and
the Helsinki European Council in December that year asked the Commission to prepare an
1

Action Plan for the Northern Dimension in the external and cross-border policies of the
European Union for 200003. This was adopted at the Feira European Council in June 2000,
with the request that the Commission take a leading role in its implementation.

In April 2001, a second foreign ministers conference on the ND took place. It was organised
under the Swedish presidency and held in Luxembourg. Later that year a full report prepared
by the presidency was presented to the Gothenburg European Council.1 The Action Plan
provides both the blueprint for implementation and the backdrop against which successes and
failures can be analysed. The first part of the plan recalls the major soft-security challenges of
the region and addresses the horizontal questions of institutional and financial frameworks for
activities relating to the Northern Dimension. The second part sets out the operational
objectives and perspectives for actions between 2000 and 2003. As its underlying rationale, it
is stated that the European Union and its partner countries believe that the Northern
Dimension will contribute to reinforcing positive interdependence between them thereby
enhancing security, stability, democratic reforms and sustainable development in the region.2
The priority sectors listed in the Action Plan are for the most part those of the 1999 Council
guidelines. An impressive array of issues are mentioned, as if quantity were to substitute or
disguise the scant possibilities for real action.

Under the heading of infrastructure, which is conceptualised as a soft-security issue by merit

of being a precondition for enhanced regional cooperation and people-to-people contacts, one
finds subsumed the issues of energy, transport, telecommunication and information
technology. Climate change, forests, and sustainable development are mentioned under the
rubric of environment pollution. The section on nuclear safety cites the issue of spent fuel in
northwest Russia and the nuclear power plants of Kola, Leningrad oblast and Ignalina
(Lithuania). Public health issues are seen as comprising all kinds of communicable diseases.
Also included in the plan are trade and business cooperation and human resources
development and research. The justice and home affairs section deals mainly with the
problem of organised crime, while the part on regional and cross-border cooperation focuses
on aspects of improved border management. Finally attention is drawn to the particularly
difficult situation of Kaliningrad.3

Obstacles to an efficient coordination between the EUs programmes in

the region
Three main obstacles prevent interoperability of the EUs programmes. First, implementing
transnational projects in Tacis and Phare requires applications for funds from each separate
national fund within these programmes. Thus, the Via Baltica project was accepted by the
Estonian Phare cross-border cooperation programme while being rejected by the Latvian one.
In regard to this situation, the Regional Policy Committee of the European Parliament called
in 1999 for the creation of a single fund for all cross-border cooperation involving the three
programmes as part of its report on the Northern Dimension.4 Alternatively, such problems
could be solved by permitting applicants to apply for, and link together, project funding from
the three different EU financing instruments Tacis, Phare and Interreg (so-called crossfunding) regardless of whether it is a joint project between an EU member state, which can
apply for Interreg funding, and a candidate country (like Poland which at present can apply
for Phare funding) or an EU member and a non-candidate country (like Russia, which at
present can apply for Tacis funding).

A second problem is that the Phare and Interreg programmes have different administrative
structures. Phare relies on national agencies and thus entails much longer processing periods
for proposed projects while Interreg has a secretariat in Brussels, which selects the individual
projects.5 This difficulty has been partly overcome by the introduction of Joint Programming
Documents, which should also ensure a smooth transition from Phare cross-border
cooperation to Interreg programmes after enlargement, since these programmes are
exclusively within the EU.

The third and most important difficulty has been the varying programming periods. Whereas
Interreg finances projects for up to three years, Tacis and Phare are limited to annual projects
and budget allocations. This planning incompatibility has not been alleviated through the new
Commission guidelines on cross-border cooperation of Interreg and Tacis. The double
application process will continue to be necessary,6 and project applicants are in charge of the
actual coordination.7 The fact that the Northern Dimension is even mentioned in the new
Tacis regulations, in the context of introducing the vague possibility of multi-annual Tacis
and Phare projects, is evidence that the talk of enhanced cooperation is leading to action.
3

To sum up, the Commission was made aware of these three problem areas (multiple
applications, different administrative structures and planning incompatibilities), and has now
made those who apply for project funds aware of them. Applicants are now asked to point out
aspects of their proposed projects that are of relevance to other EU programmes and to put in
double or triple applications, thus closing the self-referential circle.

These are some of the problems in realising the Northern Dimensions first policy goal of
creating added value through internal coordination of the Unions programmes on softsecurity issues in the region. Efforts are being made to address these problems, though it is
unlikely that the Union will succeed in merging the three types of programmes on crossborder cooperation in all the border areas of the region.

Sub-regional Partners
On the level between the EU and its partner countries are a multitude of sub-regional
organisations and institutions active in the Northern Dimension area. It has been argued that
this overabundance has led to an excess of spontaneous institutional activity without clear
overall guidelines, making coordination difficult. Originally, the Finnish initiative envisioned
the Commission taking up an active leadership position in the CBSS (Council of Baltic Sea
States) and in the BEAC (Barents Euro-Arctic Council) and eventually joining the Arctic
Council. The three most important regional councils were to generate ideas for the Northern
Dimension and help implement its policy. These hopes have not materialised, partly because
the external relations and enlargement directorate-generals (DGs) of the EU tend to keep tight
control over their policies and stress the strong bilateral component and the importance of
national administrations in the partner countries for implementation. Once again a picture
emerges of DG Regional Policy being far more open to flexible regional approaches to spatial
planning (that is, balanced and sustainable development across the European space), while the
other two DGs focus on sectoral projects in a national setting.

One recent example of cooperation between the EU and CBSS is the Northern e-Dimension,
initiated by CBSS and prepared in close cooperation with the Commissions DG Information
Society over the course of nine months in 2001. It is part of the soft-security goal to enhance
regional cooperation by facilitating new business opportunities through closing the gap in
information technology infrastructure. This would also serve to reduce the social divide.
4

The Northern e-Dimension Action Plan was adopted at a ministerial meeting in Riga on 28
September 2001. A kick-off meeting was held in Tampere on 6 November 2001. For the
northwest Russia component of the e-Dimension the Commission now proposes an indicative
budget of 12m euros.8
Developments under the Swedish EU presidency in 2001 are promising. The overall aim was
to establish the Northern Dimension as a permanent EU policy and integrate it in the daily
activities of the Union. Due to the strong personal interest Commissioner Chris Patten
developed in the Northern Dimension, and particular in the Kaliningrad question, the
extremely limited personnel capacity of the Commission section dealing with the Northern
Dimension was reinforced. An ND Focal Point (that is, a network of contact points between
participating countries, institutions and organisations) and an Internet web site were
established.9 Most important was the foreign ministers conference on the ND in April 2001,
where the CBSS, the BEAC and the Arctic Council delivered project proposals. The USA and
Canada took part as observers.

Outside the Northern Dimension programme are parallel efforts to develop tourism and
manage the environmental and economic sustainability of coastal zones, to plan for
development that cuts across national boundaries, to create institutional and infrastructure
links of strategic importance between major urban centres, to develop a pan-Baltic integrated
transport structure (ports, ferry terminals, roads) and to develop transnational institutions. All
of these aims come under the remit of the EUs Interreg III programme in support for the
Baltic Sea Region, which was approved by the Commission in October 2001. In the period
200006, an overall 97m will be paid out of the Community budget for the aforementioned
purposes.10 This is expected to attract an additional 120m through national programmes and
international financial institutions.11
From 1994 to 2000, the Phare programme spent roughly 55m on environmental projects in
the Baltic Region. Under ISPA (Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-Accession), a
programme for infrastructure modernisation in EU candidate countries, a further 500m will
be spent annually on the environment for all EU applicants. The Baltic States and Poland will
receive a large share of it, though how much is not yet clear. Tacis funds for the environment
in northwest Russia were quite modest, amounting to 24m between 1996 and 1999.12
Nevertheless, these funds made a significant contribution to the clean-up of the Krazny Bor
5

hazardous waste disposal site near St Petersburg, the clean-up of the Tuloma River and
improving the water quality in Karelia. They were also used to develop strategies for natural
parks. The Tacis nuclear safety programme commanded most resources: 317m was spent
between 1991 and 1999 on technical and financial assistance in this area. On border crossings,
the Tacis programme spent 50m in northwest Russia and Kaliningrad in the period 1996
99.13 The Tacis total budget for cross-border projects on Russian territory in the year 200203
is 90m, of which 38m has already been spent. An additional 11m will be spent in
Kaliningrad on border crossings to create the physical infrastructure customs posts and
passport control with appropriate information systems shared with Lithuania and Poland.14
Also in Kaliningrad, some 33m have been spent on health, education and the energy sector.
Within the general context of pre-EU accession aid encompassing Phare, Sapard (aid for
agricultural and rural development) and ISPA, the three Baltic states have been allocated an
overall amount of around 550m for the years 200002. Between 1992 and 1999, they
received some 770m through Phare alone; however, there has been significant differences in
the amounts received by each of the three Baltic republics. Lithuania has received about
double the amount given to Estonia, and one third more than that given to Latvia.15 This gives
an indication of the Unions financial involvement in the region. By comparison, its activities
in northwest Russia are dwarfed.

Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP)

The NDEP is the newcomer to the EUs northern soft-security policy. At the ministerial
conference on the Northern Dimension in April 2001, it was supported and seen as a good
way to mobilise and combine financial resources and realise synergies when conditions are
appropriate for investment.16 The NDEP was endorsed at the EU summit in June that year. Its
role is to address environmental hot spots and energy efficiency in the Northern Dimension
Area. Initially it will focus exclusively on northwest Russia. Considering the figures on
financial support under Tacis above (less than Egypt receives in aid from the EU) this is a
development in the right direction, given the significant cross-border impact of environmental
problems in this region. For example, sewage from the St Petersburg area (population 1.5
million) and from Kaliningrad (population one million) is discharged untreated into the Baltic
Sea. The Barents Sea situation is even worse, given the many decommissioned nuclear
submarines stored there.

The concept and approach for NDEP was prepared jointly by the EBRD, Denmark, Finland
and Sweden, on an initiative originally taken by the Nordic Investment Bank. The fund for
NDEP projects will receive about 50m from Tacis and another 50m from the EBRD and the
Northern Investment Bank (NIB). Member states, especially riverine states of the Baltic Sea,
are also expected to donate substantial sums at a donors conference in 2002. The EBRD
intends to increase its allotments for Russia by 50% over the next 35 years.

The most important achievement of the NDEP is the mandate by the Stockholm European
Council for the European Investment Bank (EIB), an EU financial institution, to make 100m
available for projects with direct environmental impact in Russia. This is truly a new move for
the EIB, especially considering the securities given by the EU for EIB lending in Russia. A
Council decision on this was adopted on 6 November 2001, granting a Community guarantee
to the European Investment Bank against losses under a special lending action for selected
environmental projects in the Baltic Sea basin of Russia under the Northern Dimension.17

The mix of grants, loans and user charges will certainly help to overcome institutional
weaknesses, which have become evident in particular in sole grants projects on the Russian
side of implementation. It might also constitute a model for interlocking institutions with IFIs,
the EU, member countries and recipient countries all paying into the same fund and
committing themselves to the successful follow-through on proposed projects.

Overall, the basic dilemma remains that as the Baltic States catch up with the EU, the greater
the economic divide between them and northwest Russia will grow. The more the EU insists
on the full and inflexible application of the Schengen acquis by all candidate countries in the
region, the less cross-border contact there will be between EU citizens and their neighbours in
Russia. Sealing off an enlarged EU from its neighbours with weak political and judicial
systems will not help the development of those neighbours, who would otherwise benefit
from increased contact.

The existence of so many actors, partners, programmes and topics on a policy agenda may at
times, prove to be inefficient. Nevertheless, such variety may also serve as a useful
fermenting forum. When a certain issue becomes urgent, the onus to act will most likely fall
first into the remit of the institution with the broadest policy approach, such as the Northern
Dimension. However, national suspicions and administrative inertia have often slowed down
7

or put a brake on cooperation and integration between Russia and the EU. The Danish
presidency of the EU in the second half of 2002 will have to make sure that the Northern
Dimensions momentum is not lost.

Documents can be found at:

http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/north_dim/index.htm
2
Action Plan, heading 7, p. 4.
3
For a detailed analysis of the Unions policy towards Kaliningrad see: Heinz Timmermann Kaliningrad: Eine
Pilotregion fr die Gestaltung der Partnerschaft EU-Rulan? In Osteuropa 9/2001, pp. 1037-166. See also:
James Baxendale EU-Russia Relations: Is 2001 a Turning Point for Kaliningrad? In European Foreign Affairs
Review 6, 2001, pp. 437-464.
4
European Parliament (1999) Report on the Communication of the Commission - A Northern Dimension for the
policies of the Union. PE 230.181/fin. In April 2000 Parliament, in its opinion on the INTERREG III guidelines,
has called on the Commission to co-ordinate better with INTERREG the various instruments used for cooperation projects in third countries and stressed that this co-ordination of instruments is a sine qua non for
genuine co-operation.
5
Baltic Sea Region INTERREG III (2000) Community Initiative Programme 2000-2006, pp. 44-46.
http://www.spatial.balitic.net/iiib.html.
6
European Commission (2001) A Guide to bringing INTERREG and TACIS funding together, Brussels, p. 5.
7
ibid. p. 15.
8
European Commission (2001) TACIS Regional Cooperation: Strategic Considerations 2002-2006 and
Indicative Programme 2002-2003, Brussels, p. 21 and Annex A p. 25.
9
This web-page can be found under:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/north_dim/index.htm
10
Uniting Europe, No. 162, 24 October 2001, p. 9.
11
Bulletin Quotidien Europe, 17 October 2001.
12
See: http://www.eur.ru/eng/TACIS
13
TACIS CBC indicative programme 2000-2003, p.2.
14
ibid. p. 15.
15
These numbers are calculated from the Commissions Regular Reports on Latvias Progress towards
Accession, Regular Reports on Estonias Progress towards Accession, and Regular Reports on Lithuanias
Progress towards Accession, released on 13 November 2001, Brussels, p. 9 for all reports.
16
Council document 9546/01, p. 2.
17
Published in the Official Journal of the European Communities 9.11.2001, L 292/41, Doc. No. 2001/777/EC.