Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region: A Year After and Beyond

Summary:

Several publications, articles and books devoted to the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region contain a reference to 2005, the year the Strategy was born. On 15 November 2005 the European Parliament submitted to the president of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso a document entitled “Europe’s Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region”, drafted by the Baltic Europe Intergroup. In the process of drafting the document, MEP Ģirts Valdis Kristovskis invited a group of Latvian scholars to look into the prospects of the Baltic area. A year later the results of the study were published in the book “Baltic Sea Region after the Enlargement of the European Union: Future Prospects”. One of the aims of the study was to elaborate scenarios for regional development. The authors arrived at three possible models: fragmentation, integration within the EU framework and the Baltic Sea Region as an expander of EU policies to outer areas. The first scenario was excluded as the least possible prospect, but the two others are still valid.