Nordic members construct new northern flank for EU

Date: 18/04/1996

THE Baltic Sea is just as European as

the Mediterranean Sea, the Nordic governments of the EU constantly remind their southern counterparts.

With the high-profile Euro-Med initiative under way after its launch in Barcelona last year, it is now the turn of the Baltics to hear pledges of a free trade zone and political cooperation.

Unlike the nations of North Africa and the Middle East, however, the Baltic states and Poland have real hopes of winning a piece of a huge commercial pie, some military protection and membership of the EU, if not of NATO.

For the EU and Russia, the two larger powers, the Baltic Council is a convenient forum. Because both are equal partners in the council, EU officials hope that it will provide a venue for increasing political cooperation.

The region is potentially explosive. Russia adamantly opposes a European (meaning NATO) military presence on Baltic soil, but the three former Soviet republics are looking for European sponsorship to bring them into NATO.

For the Baltic states themselves, the potential prizes are enormous. Official freedom from the Soviet yoke and security for its citizens are just the beginning. They stand to make tremendous gains if they can adapt their infrastructure to serve as the gateway for large volumes of trade between the EU and Russia.

When they meet in a Baltic Sea states summit on 3-4 May on the island of Gotland, the heads of state of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden will pledge to strengthen regional cooperation and stimulate regional trade.

The final declaration, to be called the Visby Charter after the summit venue, will stress the importance of creating free markets in the newly independent states and pledge international financial help to that end. But, linking aid to “stability and civic security”, it will also demand that the emerging democracies guarantee law and order and protect the human rights of miniorities in the region.

The reward for making those changes is the promise of a free trade area.

“That's the big architecture here - to create a bridge between the industrialised, western Europe and the developing parts of Eastern Europe and western Asia,” said a foreign ministry official in Stockholm.

A real Baltic initiative would also bring more balance into the EU's relations with its closest neighbours, adding a northern flank to the eastern and southern concentrations.

The Union's financial and political efforts in Central and Eastern Europe have been counterbalanced by those on the southern bank of the Mediterranean, allowing both Germany and France to have their spheres of influence. Now, Nordic EU members see their vocation along the Union's northern frontier.

Some 60 million people live in the Baltic region, where four EU member states (Denmark, Germany, Finland and Sweden) join four candidate members (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland) and Russia, with whom the Union has struck far-reaching political and commercial cooperation accords.

But far from being homogenous, the Baltic states are fiercely different in language, religion and culture.

Lithuania, the largest and richest of the three, has a largely Catholic population culturally linked to neighbouring Poland, and a large Polish minority.

Latvia, to its north, has a Russian population accounting for nearly half its total population, and the accompanying language and Orthodox faith.

Estonia, wedged between Latvia and Russia and facing Helsinki across the Gulf of Finland, has a Lutheran population and close ties to Finland.

Despite their differences, the EU seems set on dealing with them as a group and, if it carries on in the tradition of previous enlargements, would probably bring all three into the Union together.

Lithuania is the most ready, however, and public opinion in Latvia is divided over whether to join the Union. Riga has made the most conciliatory statements to both Moscow and the EU, saying it would not make moves towards one at the expense of the other.

At Visby, the assembled leaders will support EU membership for the three Baltic states and Poland, declaring they “have an important role to play in the EU”.

Speaking in Tallin last January, Finnish Premier Paavo Lipponen declared: “Finland and the other Nordic states will see to it that Estonia and the other Baltic states are among the first to start membership negotiations with the European Union.”

Even Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundlandt, whose own country rejected EU membership, has been campaigning recently to get the Baltics into both the Union and NATO.

The EU's Nordic members argue that Baltic integration into the European club is a key to security throughout the continent.

To aid Baltic aspirations for membership, Sweden has promoted interparliamentary cooperation between the coastal states on the Baltic Sea and says this initiative has contributed to solidifying democratic and parliamentary traditions in the three new nations.

After 50 years of Soviet rule, the Baltics have also had to work hard to transform their command economies to market economies.

Estonia surprised observers with a 5&percent; growth rate last year - higher than any EU member state - and very respectable rates of inflation (30&percent;) and unemployment (3&percent;). Political chaos there has not undermined the country's fundamental economic stability, which analysts expect President Lennart Meri to maintain.

The Commission, assuming that EU trade privileges granted to Eastern European nations will boost commerce through the Baltic region, says that business and investment opportunities should be further enhanced when the Baltics and Russia join the World Trade Organisation.

The Commission has pledged its support for the establishment of the Baltic Free Trade Area, including its customs union scheduled for 1998, as well as a Central Europe Free Trade Agreement between the Baltics and Poland.

To increase private sector capacity, the Commission has promised to work with international lending institutions to speed up Baltic moves to privatise banks and develop financial services, invest in small business and establish a business advisory council.

Three northern routes are already part of ambitious Union plans to criss-cross the continent with transport networks - a Helsinki-Warsaw route, a Riga-Gdansk-Bremen route and a Helsinki-Moscow corridor.

The Commission also wants to promote short-sea shipping on the Baltic.

Energy networks are also in sight - a Russia-Belarus-Poland-Germany gas pipeline and a crude-oil pipeline from Russia to Finland. Signing European energy charters has made the Baltic republics eligible for energy investments. The EU also wants to help Russia and Estonia improve nuclear safety.

Just as in the Euro-Med initiative, environmental concerns bring Baltic neighbours together. The Commission and international banks have pledged to help the coastal states with water conservation and measures to curb hazardous waste transport. The EU will also push the new countries to enact and enforce 'green' legislation.

Drastic pollution in the Baltic Sea was the motivating force for the first meeting of coastal states in Helsinki in 1988.

At a subsequent meeting in Ronneby, Sweden, in 1990, a political dimension was added when Stockholm invited the three Baltic republics independently from the Soviet Union. Flying their flags alongside the USSR banner, the Swedish hosts forced the Moscow delegation to allow its Baltic counterparts some autonomy.

If the Visby conference can be as revolutionary, it may indeed send the European architects scurrying to their drafting tables.