Europe

1
Europes North Historical Geopolitics and
International Institutional Dynamics, 2-5 ECTS3.
European integration in the North is the EU the
leading power? Autumn 2011

• Pami Aalto
• Jean Monnet Professor/Director, Jean Monnet
  Centre of Excellence on European Politics and
  European-Russian Relations, University of Tampere
  pami.aalto_at_uta.fi
• lthttp//www.uta.fi/jkk/jmc/index.htmlgt

2
Towards a mixed geopolitical/institutionalist
approach

• The late 1990s underestimation of EUs power in
  NE, although
• EU included the Baltics as part of its CEE
  enlargement against all odds
• EU moved closer to the sphere of influence that
  Russia more or less willingly inherited from the
  Soviet Union
• Beyond conventional notions of political agency
• No to traditional-geopolitical, pure
  state-centrism locking of imagination into the
  category of Westphalian nation states/Westphalian-
  federal states. In an ideal-typed Westphalian
  nation-state, the power of the centre is
  uniformly distributed across all territorial and
  functional dimensions. The power of the centre
  reaches all corners of the state equally and is
  not territorially and functionally differentiated
  unlike in the case of the EU. In
  Westphalian-federal states (e.g. GER, USA), the
  constituent units maintain more independence, but
  their ties to the centre are identical to each
  other across both territorial and functional
  dimensions
• No to regionalist analyses taking the EU as an
  organization/framework for regional co-operation
  of NE states. International intergovernmental
  organizations consist of nation-states, or of
  federal or other type of states that are all
  equally bound by the common rules typically
  pertaining to a limited sector of policy. IGOs
  thus have limited autonomy from their members. In
  the EU, member states remain variably integrated
  with the common rules whilst remaining greatly
  affected by EU integration practically across all
  sectors of policy (30-70 of national legislation
  originate in European law)
• The thesis of the EU as the main geopolitical
  subject of northern Europe

3
The opening up of EUs wider northern Europe

• For the EU, DEN EU membership (1973), GER
  re-unification (1991), and FIN, SWE memberships
  (1995) opened up a new view onto NE. They
  gradually engaged the Union into their efforts of
  overcoming the remaining Cold War era divisions
  in northern Europe by regional co-operation
• The Baltics, POL sought membership in the
  mid-1990s, joining 2004
• Russia bound to the EU direction by a strategic
  partnership with the Union
• NW-Russia tied to the northern EU and EEA area by
  the 2006 renewed Northern Dimension (ND) based on
  equal partnership (EU, RUS, ICE, NOR)
• USA mostly withdrawn from NE after Soviet troops
  pull-outs from the Baltic states, 1997 NEI, 1998
  Baltic charters, Baltic/POL NATO memberships
• In all, a powerful north European opening to the
  EU due to the pressure for EU accession states
  and applicants to converge with EU legislation
  and policy priorities, whilst a less binding but
  clearly observable pull applies to the EUs
  neighbours with market and other interests in the
  EU area

• The EU has become the entity towards which the
  minor, small and great powers in the European
  north, and many regional agents and organizations
  there tend to look before anything else, and
  towards which regional political and economic
  activities increasingly tend to gear
• But it is not taking the traditional great power
  place of RUS/GER!

4
The geo-economy of EUs North at the time of the
2004 enlargement
1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Imports/EU 23.3 23.9 66.0 64.6 59.2 67.8 65.3 62.6 56.5 57.9 76.5
Exports/EU 17.8 19.0 54.0 51.0 48.5 66.7 72.5 76.5 69.5 68.0 82.4
Imports/CIS 21.6 20.4 18.8 17.0 17.4 14.2 17.0 9.8 10.0 9.5 13.4
Exports/CIS 30.4 30.3 25.1 25.1 26.4 20.8 13.4 4.0 5.1 5.4 6.0
Estonias foreign trade with the EU-15 and CIS,
1993-2003 ( of value)

• With the exception of Russia, and slightly less
  so, Norway, the countries of the region have from
  one half to two thirds of their EU-bound trade
  with other northerners
• Germany occupies a central role in these regional
  patterns
• North European countries extra-EU trade for
  example to the US and Asian directions
• Northern Europe economically a European
  sub-region. Despite notable degrees of
  regionality, it is clear that economically
  northern Europe does not stand alone, and even
  less does the post-Soviet north with its
  vulnerable small Baltic economies and
  export-geared natural resources industries of
  Russia
• Cohen (1991) CEE from buffer to gateway region
  from geopolitics to geoeconomics

5
The EUs wider northern Europe

• Due to strategic reorganisation of northern
  Europe, EU has been invited into making what can
  be termed its wider northern Europe, and has
  also increasingly exploited the opportunity to
  this this
• How wide such a project can ever be? Even after
  the breaking of the Cold War era bipolar division
  of the world, we continue to live in a world of
  boundaries and frontiers, where wide always
  remains a relative term
• Need to conceptualise the EUs rule in more
  detail

6
Away from Westphalia

• Traditional European integration theories
  functionalism/neofunctionalism and
  intergovernmentalism/liberal intergovernmentalism
  focus on the character of EU integration as such
  and deal with the degree to which already
  existing member states decide to co-operate or
  compete internal dynamicsn
• The Westphalian claims
• lack of a common European identity (Smith,
  Hoffmann) vs. common and consistently pursued
  values e.g. in enlargement erasing
  postcommunism, post-Soviet and changing
  identity political context of northern Europe
• member states ability to formulate common
  political interests (Duchene civilian power
  Medrano economic giant, political dwarf
  Rynning not a strategic actor) vs. new treaty,
  solidarity clause, ESDP, crisis management
  troops?
• Hills capability-expectations gap thesis
  (1993) vs. its closing

• Towards a broad view of EU foreign policy and
  beyond rigid distinction between what used to be
  the EUs I, II, III pillars before the Lisbon
  treaty
• what is said and done to others under the EU
  flag, either by representatives of the Union
  institutions or member states, and what these
  others take as EU action, can conveniently be
  understood to connote EU foreign policy
• Focus on the regional policy impact of various EU
  activities

7
In search of new theories network governance and
boundaries (I)

• Part of the new multi-level governance approach
  of European integration studies, comes from
  comparative politics, not IR
• Conceptualizes the EUs system of rule as mixing
  elements of foreign and domestic policy, and
  relying on partnerships, networks and interactive
  dependencies the application of the principle of
  subsidiarity
• The EUs system of rule argued to represent a
  more complex form of political agency than in
  Westphalian entities. This leads to portraying
  the EUs policy activities as prone to
  incoherence due to the various levels and actors
  involved, which often makes the policies
  difficult to grasp to their target groups
• The EUs system of rule is not very often
  unidirectional, but rather a non-hierarchical,
  fragmented one that uses a mixture of levels and
  actors
• Complex network governance odten makes it unclear
  for outsiders to figure out who is doing what
  within the EU, and where do the EUs boundaries
  eventually reach
• EUs network e.g. NOR, ICE, NATO, CBSS, NCM,
  BEAC, OSCE
• EUs policy-export to its network partners,
  receiving states and regions, is the subsequent
  construction of fuzzy, differentially
  constituted, partly overlapping and partly
  separate boundaries around the Union along
  geopolitical, institutional/legal, transactional
  and cultural divisions

8
In search of new theories network governance and
boundaries (II)

• Geopolitical boundary avoidance of fortress
  Europe scenario in NE. The EUs multi-level and
  multi-agent, regionalist engagement of the
  Baltics and NW-RUS has supported webs of
  de-centralized cross-border co-op which has
  helped to reduce a little some of the previous
  tensions
• Institutional/legal boundary soft security
  challenges from the Baltics/RUS in the form of
  organized crime, money-laundering, and
  trafficking of arms, drugs and human beings,
  create a need for a considerable alignment of
  legal frameworks between the EU and its network
  partners
• Transactional boundary efforts to reduce trade
  barriers among north European countries. Notable
  advances regardless of Russias rather complex
  economic transition problems some signs of
  voluntary, though yet partial adaptation to EU
  market and trade principles in Russia
• Cultural boundary youth and student exchange,
  and town twinning programmes to spread European
  social and institutional cultures
• This literature challenges the Westphalian notion
  of sovereignty, and envisions a
  multi-perspectival/postmodern European polity
• Fuzziness and messiness in the Unions
  geopolitical form several grey zones such as
  the post-Soviet north, where EU, its members, and
  its network members and target territories meet
  and mingle with each other
• Yet, the result is a model that eludes
  goal-oriented action and responsibility into the
  multiple layers of EU governance could
  incremental progress in fact account for
  identity and interest building?

9
In search of new theories geopolitics, ES and
empire

• Empire literature relates to critical geopolitics
  and the English School
• Introduces power and responsibility much more
  explicitly into the analysis
• Suggests historical analogies for the
  contemporary European order by looking at
  pre-Westphalian world systems neo-medievalism,
  neo-sumerianism (Wæver 1998)
• Imperial centredness is about complexity,
  overlapping authority, and a diffused nature of
  the distribution and exercise of power from the
  EU-centre. This means that the power of the
  loosely defined EU-centre gradually fades when
  one moves away from it, first towards the inner
  circles, and then towards the outer circles and
  the fringes of the metaphorically understood
  EU-empire. We end up with a gradated or
  concentric model of European integration
• Christiansen et al. EUs own near abroad in
  the BSR region
• Compared to many other historical empires, the
  EU-empire commands a striking amount of
  legitimacy among the Balts, Poles, and others, as
  they voluntarily approach the Union as a means of
  taking distance from Russia the support of
  Baltic Russophone populations towards the EU
  accession of their countries of residence
• Tunander the fuzziness of borders that is
  implicated in the EUs and Russias efforts in
  the 1990s of creating a greater space for
  themselves within the Baltics, in fact connotes
  the prospect of dialogue, which did not exist in
  a similar sense in the sharply bordered Cold War
  era Europe

10
Concentric EU order (EU empire) with a focus on
northern Europe

• The circles of the concentric model are best
  understood as a theoretical organizing device.
• In practice there is movement and tension
  between the circles when member-states take the
  lead or strive towards the centre along some
  policy sectors whilst expressing reservations
  along some other sectors
• Magnetism
• Continuous strengthening and expansion of the EU
  empire until it found its limits in the case of
  Russia in the early 2000s

11
EUs northern policies universalising trends
(vs. the more regional approach of the ND)

• Enlargement policy and the Unions 1993
  Copenhagen criteria
• Stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy,
  the rule of law, human rights, and respect for
  and the protection of minorities
• Functioning market economy capable of coping with
  competitive pressures and market forces within
  the Union
• Candidates must take on the Unions acquis
  (80,000-odd pages), and the goals of political,
  economic, and monetary Union
• Extension of the Unions Schengen borders regime
  eastwards lifts internal border controls, but
  introduces tighter visa and other control
  procedures in the external borders in order to
  tame the soft security threats seen as
  emanating into the Union from the post-Soviet
  space
• Accession states required to start applying
  Schengen practices on their eastern borders
  already before their EU accession
• In practice, EU required unilateral abolishment
  of the 1990s simplified border crossing practices
  from the ESTRUS and LITKAL borders
• The 1999 Common Strategy on Russia (CSR) and the
  1994/1998 EURussian Partnership and Co-operation
  Agreement (PCA) proceeded from common values,
  since then more pragmatic approach
• The EU-Russia 2003 common spaces and the
  roadmaps of 2004 common EURussian
  socio-economic space and a free market area still
  a goal in addition to international/external
  security co-op
• PCA still gives institutional framework for
  EU-RUS co-operation summits, Cooperation Council
  and Committee (officials level)