Governing Common Seas: from a Baltic Strategy to an Arctic Policy

2.00.00pm GMT Tue 30th Sep 2008

Read Diana's intervention at the International Workshop on 'Transnational Governance and Policymaking in the Baltic Sea and beyond' at the Institute for European Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada:

Governing Common Seas: from a Baltic Strategy to an Arctic Policy

Diana Wallis MEP, Vice-President of the European Parliament

The starting point for my intervention is to ask a question: is there an obvious relationship between what the EU has been doing on the Baltic Sea and the proposals for the Arctic?

To answer this we should firstly consider how the two seas have been dealt with by the EU over the years.

The Northern Dimension (ND) has been the vehicle which has allowed a Baltic Sea strategy to develop. I am sure other speakers will have touched on the history of the ND, so I will keep this brief.

Soon after its accession to the EU, Finland intensified its efforts to promote cooperation in the north involving the whole of the EU, first proposing the ND initiative 1997 "aimed at providing a common framework for the promotion of dialogue and concrete cooperation, strengthening stability, well-being and sustainable development in northern Europe".

Once political approval for this initiative was secured, the ND took a more concrete shape, when the European Council endorsed the concept in 1999 and the guidelines for the first ND Action Plan 2001-2003 in 2000. The ND covered a broad area from Iceland and Greenland to north-west Russia and from the Arctic region to the southern shores of the Baltic Sea. The focus was on the Baltic countries, then candidates for EU enlargement, and on Kaliningrad and north-west Russia, for 'soft security' reasons - including nuclear waste and border questions. Some have argued that above all else the ND was principally designed as a policy for managing bilateral relations with Russia and as a method of targeting money into the then candidate countries around the Baltic Sea.

The ND was renewed in the form of a second Action Plan and then most recently in 2007 as a partnership to include the EU, Iceland, Norway and Russia. This latter arrangement was a marked contrast to what had gone before where Russia often seemed to feel itself as an object of EU policy rather than as a full participant.

From the European Parliament's perspective the ND was not always well supported when it came to Plenary for debate, partly because of the apparent absence of a parliamentary input into the policy as it developed. However, it is fair to say, that since the enlargement of 2004 there has much greater engagement from MEPs. In particular, there has been a great deal of focus on a Baltic Sea strategy as interest increased after enlargement. It is interesting to note the within the European Parliament there is an Baltic Interest Group which although having no formal status within the legislative process is nevertheless very active, having produced for example, a Baltic Sea strategy and pressuring the Commission to adopt in turn a Baltic Sea Strategy, a draft of which will be published in December 2008.

After this date the relevant stakeholders will be consulted during several events to be organised in the Baltic Sea Region. The Strategy, led by the Directorate General for Regional Policy, will be presented to the European Council in June 2009 and be one of the main priorities of the Swedish EU Presidency during the second half of 2009.

Personally I have never been wholly convinced by the need for a specific Baltic Sea Strategy. The Baltic Sea is now effectively a mare nostrum and is covered by existing EU regional and environmental policies. I suspect much of this is significant for domestic audiences. It might not be such a coincidence that the MEP who was a prime mover of the Baltic Sea Strategy has found his way into the Finnish Government as Foreign Minister!

By contrast, the motivation for an Arctic policy is quite different in my opinion. Whereas the ND and in turn the Baltic Sea Strategy was as a result of pressure from the Member States who had stakes in the development of the Baltic, the Arctic Policy is as a direct result of the EU's Maritime Policy, although in fact the origins are much wider.

It is fair to say that although the Arctic has always had a reference in the ND, (the first Action Plan stated that 'an Arctic Window would also increase attention to arctic indigenous peoples in the Northern Dimension co-operation') it was not until 2002, when the Danish EU Presidency held a Conference on the ND and the Arctic Window in Ilulissat, Greenland did the Arctic gain a more significant profile. However, despite this conference and the further reference to the Arctic Window in the second ND Plan, it is actually quite difficult to assess what specific projects might be deemed 'Arctic' rather than linked to environmental clean-up in North West Russia.

Again, although the new ND partnership makes reference to the Arctic, it is in rather general terms stating the 'Arctic and sub-Arctic areas requiring special attention'. There are no particular strategies to support this.

As a way of stressing the importance of the Arctic within the ND when MEPs and other parliamentarians from pan-Nordic bodies, met at the Parliamentary Conference on the ND in Brussels in 2007, the two main themes for discussion were the ND policies related to the Baltic Sea region and to the Arctic Region. Substantial weight was thus given to the Arctic in the Conference Statement issued on 1 March 2007:

5. underlines the role of the Arctic as an early warning area for global climate change; stresses that rapid Arctic warming is likely to have major implications for the whole planet and needs to be addressed globally; emphasizes that climate change and increased ultraviolet radiation in the Arctic have a major impact on the social, cultural and economic well-being of Arctic people; notes, in this context, the Conference of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region's call for, in its resolution of 4 August 2006, the adoption of a clear cut, visible and dynamic Arctic policy within the Northern Dimension; underlines that mapping, recognizing and use of indigenous peoples traditional knowledge as a basis for developing the principles of vulnerability and adaptation capacity as a possible tool for future spatial planning, institutional frame working and mitigate measures, to prepare all residents of the High North for the new situation on climate change;

6. recognizes the significance and the potential that the International Polar Year 2007/2008 holds for the promotion of the Arctic region and the development of Arctic science, as well as for the possibility of creating a Charter for Arctic Governance;

7. emphasises the importance to ensure that the exploitation of the resources and the management of the marine environment in the Barents Sea area is done in an environmentally sound and sustainable manner;

That Parliamentary Conference recognised, as many had, the particular developments that the Arctic face, particularly the effects of global warming on the ice cap, the shift northwards of fish stocks and the exploitation of significant energy reserves. Added to this was the feeling that the existing international agreements which apply to the Arctic region were inadequate in face of these particular developments.

Part of the problem of the inadequacy of the existing international agreements relating to the Arctic stems from the backdrop in which many of these agreements were set up. A sudden rush of new initiatives and organisations came into being as the Cold War came to end. Whereas previously there had been little sense of cooperation, almost immediately following Michael Gorbachev's speech in Murmansk in 1987 when he challenged the Arctic States to form a "genuine zone of peace and fruitful cooperation" in the far north, there followed a period of furious activity between countries in the Arctic. This lead to the signing of several significant treaties and the setting up of several organisations, including the Arctic Council and the Barents Euro-Arctic Region. This plethora of organisations, both governmental and non-governmental, has made it difficult, in the eyes of many, to establish meaningful cooperation across the region. Indeed despite this relative 'pot pourri' of organisations there remain significant disputes between the Arctic nations which existing structures seem unable to resolve. I have long felt that the EU can offer something here in terms of experience of multilateral governance.

At the same time as this parliamentary pressure and the acknowledgment that policy areas were starting to gather in the Arctic, the Norwegians were starting to be heard in Brussels.

It has always been something of a paradox that the one country that had been seeking greater EU engagement in the Arctic is not a member state. Norway's Arctic focus is quite different from that of its Nordic neighbours, Finland and Sweden, who not having a coast to the High North tend to see Arctic policy in terms of sustainable rural communities, indigenous peoples and reindeer herding. Norway by comparison has produced a High North Strategy covering a range of issues such as resource management, the environment and maritime transport which they presented to the various EU institutions in Brussels where it received considerable interest.

The specific policy area which has generated the first real consideration by the European Commission of an Arctic policy is its Maritime Policy or the so-called 'Blue Book'. A communication from the Commission is due to be published at the beginning of November and it is starting to become clear that it will concentrate on three substantive issues:

• Protecting and preserving the Arctic

• Sustainable exploitation of the Arctic

• Multilateral Arctic governance

By contrast with the Baltic, of course, any greater involvement by the EU in the Arctic is somewhat dependent on its acceptance by both EU and non-EU member states. Whereas the Baltic is effectively an internal sea to the EU, the Arctic is witness to two superpowers and several other significant states who are not averse to asserting their sovereignty in the region demonstrated by the meeting in Ilulissat in May 2008 of five littoral states.

An EU Arctic policy will, of course, be essentially an external policy of the Union perhaps in the manner the ND was originally conceived. Perhaps not, however, entirely for it will tend to concentrate on and extend certain horizontal policies of the EU, particularly the marine strategy, security of energy supply and environmental stewardship. The question is, will the EU be able, through its own Arctic nations and near neighbours, to have a real impact on the future of the Arctic? Arguably, it can only do so under current structures by becoming a full player in the Arctic Council. Whether that will come to pass will become evident in the coming months.