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.

KEYWORDS:

• Macro-regions
• Baltic Sea Region
• EU macro-regional Strategies
• multilevel governance
• institutional interplay

Acknowledgments

This article builds on previous work and research of the author (together with Kristine Kern), for example, Gänzle S. and K. Kern. (2016b) and Kern and Gänzle. (2013). “The European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region.” In A ‘Macro-regional’ Europe in the Making. Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Evidence, 123–144, ed. by S. Gänzle and K. Kern. London: Palgrave.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Germany, that is, the German Länder of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Hamburg, the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region also includes partner countries, such as Norway and the Russian Federation.

2. The EUSBSR Action Plan of June 2015 changed the names of priority area coordinators and horizontal action leaders to policy area coordinators and horizontal area leaders.

3. Kern and Löffelsend (2008) distinguish three types of transnationalization: (1) the emergence of transnational networks and institutions such as the Coalition Clean Baltic; (2) the transnationalization of existing international and intergovernmental organizations that provide access to decision-making for nongovernmental and subnational actors; and (3) the establishment of new transnational institutions that are based on a multi-stakeholder approach and promote the participation of civil society from the outset.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefan Gänzle

Stefan Gänzle is associate professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Science and Management, University of Agder. Previous affiliations include the German Development Institute in Bonn, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and the University of Jena. Together with Kristine Kern he is the editor of Macro-regional Europe: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Evidence (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).