Ilkka Liikanen
Karelian Institute, University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland
The end of the Cold War has changed images of Europe and its borders dramatically. The re-conceptualisation of borders and cross-border interaction has been particularly profound in the case of Finland and its eastern borders. In terms of international politics, the border has lost its meaning as a dividing-line between two rival social and political systems, or as a ‘Finlandised’ grey zone between them. But this has not meant that the Finnish-Russian border has been stripped of supranational definitions. Since 1995 when Finland joined the EU, Finland’s eastern border has been the only land border between the European Union (EU) and the Russian Federation. Consequently, the border has become an object of manifold ‘Europeanisation’, and cross-border interaction has been re-conceptualised in terms of European integration and EU politics.
During the Cold War, the border between Finland and the Soviet Union was heavily guarded on both sides. Cooperation and trade was administered by bilateral agreements between the two states. Border crossing was subjected to tight visa regulations at only a few crossing-points. From the regional and local perspective, the border was virtually closed. Since the collapse of the Soviet system, the border has remained heavily guarded, but the forms of cross-border cooperation have changed and a new scale of interaction has emerged. On the one hand, cooperation across the Finnish–Russian border has become part of the broader dynamic of international relations defined in the framework of the EU-Russia partnership agreement, the EU Northern Dimension (ND) initiative and other instruments. On the other, new regional and local actors have taken an active role in cross-border cooperation. Regional administrative units, economic enterprises and civil-society organisations cooperate directly across the border.
Interstate relations between Finland and Russia constitute, even in the new situation, the basic framework for cross-border cooperation. However, from a European perspective the key question is no longer simply national interaction, but how the new supra-national and regional dynamics are mediated in the process. It is this two-fold transformation, the simultaneous internationalisation and regionalisation of the border, that has turned Finnish and Russian Karelia into a test-case of the new cooperation structures. And it is in this setting that an initiative like Euregio Karelia assumes broader interest as an institutional model.
Euregio Karelia - A Model for What?
Euregio Karelia, established in February 2000, is the only application of the Euroregion concept on the border between the EU and the Russian Federation. The concept of the Euroregion was first introduced on the Dutch-German border in the 1960s, and it later became a common mechanism for advancing regional cross-border cooperation along the internal borders of the EU. The organisational structures of Euroregions vary substantially, but usually they include some sort of steering committee formed by regional and local authorities. The concept has no official status in European administrative structures, but it has been recognised in various EU programmes and projects.
As European integration has deepened, Euroregions have in many cases become important instruments for coordinating regional planning and development programmes in border regions.
During the 1990s, the concept was transplanted onto the EU’s external borders with the candidate countries as a means of facilitating EU enlargement. The idea was to prepare cooperation structures that could be applied on the post-enlargement inner borders of the EU. In this respect, the idea was still close to the original concept of creating internal European cooperation.
The Euregio Karelia is a joint initiative of three Finnish border counties and, on the Russian side, the Karelian Republic. From the beginning, it was clear that new forms of cooperation would not in the foreseeable future become semi-official structures of cross-border cooperation inside the EU. The uniqueness of Euregio Karelia lies in the fact that it reflects the simultaneous internationalisation and regionalisation of the Finnish-Russian border. It is meant to mediate between supranational, national and regional patterns of interaction. It is not the type of institution that Euregio Karelia represents that is interesting, but the interplay of these different levels.
Visions and Goals
From the beginning, key figures behind the Euregio Karelia initiative promoted it as a European model; as the EU enlarged eastwards, joint administrative structures with Russian regional authorities would gain broader European significance. From the Finnish perspective, the institutional forms adopted on the Russian border were seen as exporting ‘border know-how’. They would generate a model or at least a set of experiences that would inform European border policies after the EU’s eastern enlargement.1
The argument was, however, not limited to establishing a new kind of border regime; rather, it was introduced more in terms of cross-border region-building. In the planning phase of Euregio Karelia, Tarja Cronberg, head of the regional council of Finnish North Karelia, anticipated that: ‘Common decision-making procedures and common funds [will] create a foundation for establishing new border region identities’:
The Euroregions are bridges between countries. They form new links between former enemies based on culture, sometimes a common language and a common history. In a way they are crucial for developing the European community, and they help to promote integration and a common identity for the regions.2
In this sense, the aims of the initiators were not limited to organising a regional border regime, but touched on key questions of European and national identity politics. Compared to the heated reactions to Euroregion initiatives on the Danish–German border, this argument did not provoke political discussion on a regional level. In Finland, the discussion centred more on practical economic and social issues.
One example of this discussion is an article entitled ‘Euroregion Karelia – A Model for Cooperation at the EU External Borders’, written by Tarja Cronberg and Valeri Shlyamin, the minister for external relations of the Karelian Republic, in 1999. In this joint declaration, the goals of the project were set out in concrete terms. The coordination of Interreg and Tacis programmes on the regional level was presented as the core of the new administrative model. Yet even at this stage, easing border crossings and increasing economic, social and cultural cooperation were discussed in connection with questions of security and attitudes to the border:
The benefits of Euregio Karelia for the EU would comprise a more intensive and effective use of funds, which now flow to both sides of the border and which are not coordinated. The benefit for Russia would be increased cooperation across the border which later would also imply more economic activities … From the Finnish side, the benefits would comprise changing attitudes towards the border and removing the historical burden. The Karelian question in Finland is on the agenda and a number of people work for actual physical changes in the border. A cooperative zone would remove the historical burden or at least provide a different prospective.3
The benefits were thus: for the EU, the coordination of aid programmes; for Russian Karelia, economic progress; and for Finland stability and the removal of historical burdens. The supranational, national and regional tendencies were seen as part of a larger whole, and Euregio Karelia was presented as a concrete example of the Northern Dimension of EU policies. The final aim was expressed in rather grandiose terms – even for a para-diplomatic document between sub-national not international governments:
By providing a continuous process for cooperation towards more integrated structures in economic and social development, Euregio Karelia would show that borders no longer separate but rather form both historical and future-oriented bonds between people, communities and regions on both sides of the border.4
Experiences
What has the experience been, three years after the introduction of Euregio Karelia? Although it is too early for definitive conclusions, some thoughts based on rather limited source material are possible.
1) Coordination of EU programmes. Evidently, Interreg decision-making has been brought closer to the regional level, and is coordinated with the tasks of Euregio Karelia. Coordination with Tacis projects
has been less successful, and in this sense the EU is not fully employing the potential of the Euroregion concept.
In Finland, evaluations of concrete programmes by regional authorities have usually been extremely positive. It is of course hard to say whether this is paradiplomatic rhetoric, or a reflection of real results. But in the field of research cooperation between Finnish and Russian scholars, this has been greatly advanced in the framework of the Euroregion model, creating opportunities for both partners in the broader international academic arena.
2) Economic development, trade and investment in Russian Karelia. The development of trade and investment has not met optimistic expectations. But the reasons for this are not primarily to do with the border regime and the work of Euregio Karelia. Regional economic systems have broadly similar resource bases, and their orientation is mostly towards national and international centres. In pure economic terms, the two border regions tend to compete rather than cooperate. Finns tend to distrust the Russian business environment, which at least partly explains the low level of investment in the Russian side of the border.
With regard to the EU’s external borders after enlargement, the Finnish-Russian case illustrates that economic disparities are not always complementary; it is not self-evident that a maquiladora-type industry will emerge in economically-asymmetric border zones.5 New institutional cooperation structures cannot create business, but they can promote trust in a business culture and facilitate understanding of potential economic opportunities.
3) International relations, region-building and common identity. For the initiators of the Euroregion model, refashioning mental borders has obviously been the grand aim. And likewise, the obstacles have proved to be vast, even on the inner borders of the EU. In the case of the Karelian Republic, the consolidation of the Russian nation-state strongly affects the political climate, and for nationalists cross-border region-building can easily be seen as a source of discord, or even as a threat. This has led to the paradox that, whereas in Finland the concept of Euregio Karelia forms an alternative to nostalgic post-war Karelianism, in the Russian discussion it is sometimes connected to feelings of revenge with regard to the ceded areas even though there is no longer a territorial dispute between Russia and Finland over Karelia.
A second factor that concerns both Russia and Finland is the powerful legacy of centre-led foreign policy, which tends to bypass regional initiatives. Firm elaboration of EU policies towards Russia could have altered the situation, but thus far the agreement on the EU–Russia strategic partnership or the Finnish initiative on the Northern Dimension of EU policies have not encouraged activities in the framework of Euregio Karelia. In this sense, the future of the concept depends on the details of the broader shape of the EU’s cooperation with Russia after enlargement.
Conclusions
Whether the concept of the Euroregion can gain significance as a model for cooperation between the EU and the Russian Federation depends largely on political decisions at higher levels. Thus far, it seems that both the EU and the Finnish government have not been eager to give the Euroregion model a concrete role in Northern Dimension policies. It is an open question whether this is because Euregio Karelia has not been seen as an effective instrument for solving problems, or rather because major political problems have not existed in the area.
Whatever the answer, in the light of the Kaliningrad visa discussion it seems clear that, in the future, major impetus to the discussion on cross-border interaction between the EU and Russia will not come from Karelia. The value of the Euregio Karelia experience may be in regard to problems like the Kaliningrad question. At the Euroregion meeting in Petrozavodsk in late 2002, the regional authorities involved in setting up Euregio Karelia got a foretaste of the post-enlargement agenda of cross-border cooperation when officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry explained that the preconditions for developing new structures of cooperation in Karelia were not favourable, and would remain unfavourable until the Kaliningrad question was resolved.
For some of the promoters of the Euroregion model, it has come as a surprise that, in the future, post-enlargement border policies between the EU and Russia are not to be planned primarily on the basis of earlier experiences from the Finnish border. In fact, it seems possible that new solutions on the Finnish border are to have their origin in solutions to problems of cross-border interaction between Russia and the new EU member countries. It remains to be seen whether the problems of the new borders can encourage the Russian and EU authorities to pay more attention to the experiences of Euregio Karelia as a model for cross-border cooperation, or whether the Finnish authorities will be pushed to search for new practical solutions in making the Euroregion model a more specific element of Northern Dimension policies.
Footnotes
1 Tarja Cronberg, ‘Euroregions in the Making: The Case of Euroregio Karelia’, in Pirkkoliisa Ahponen and Pirjo Jukarainen (eds.), Tearing Down the Curtain, Opening the Gates: Northern Boundaries in Change (Jyväskylä: SoPhi Academic Press, 2000), pp. 170-83.
2 Tarja Cronberg and Valeri Shlyamin, ‘Euregio Karelia - A Model for Cooperation at the EU External Borders’, in Crossing the Borders in the Northern Dimension. Oulu. (1999) [unclear?], pp. 325, 326.
3 Ibid., pp. 28-29.
4 Ibid., p. 29.
5 Following the scenario of the asymmetrical Mexico–US border, Finnish companies would invest in manufacturing bases in Russia to save on labour costs and the output would be exported.
