The Baltic Sea Environment as a Laboratory of Transnational Environmental Governance: What Kind of a Framework of Analysis?

The Baltic Sea region in the Northern Europe serves as a prime example of transnational environmental governance based on European regionalisation. The EU enlargement in 2004 brought the Baltic Sea into the sphere of EU environmental policymaking, making sea, with the exception of Russia, an EU inland sea. Regional cooperation flourishes since the 1970s and is in academic literature often referred to as one of the most successful environmental regimes in the world. The Baltic Sea region is commended also for being a pioneer of network governance, indicating a variety of actors and activities participating in environmental policymaking beyond and below the nation state level. The Baltic Sea environmental governance today is, however, far from ideal. Regime’s success is to be measured rather in terms of diplomacy than environmental effectiveness –there is no clear indication of any improvement in the environmental state of the sea. EU regulation is generally considered too lax for the vulnerable Baltic Sea; in addition, the new and also some of the old EU member countries question the priority of environmental issues in current political hierarchies. Moreover, the governing system appears as a combination of network governance and highly institutionalised inter-state environmental cooperation. Especially in the latter case, other than environmental interests often drive cooperation and regional relations especially following the crisis in Ukraine. Thus, it can be asked to what extent environmental governance of the Baltic Sea actually is about the environment, and not about pursuing some other interests and political goals? Existing approaches seem inappropriate to explain the dynamics of environmental policymaking within the Baltic Sea region. My paper describes the problematic and seeks to elaborate some analytic and conceptual tools that can be used to make sense of processes that we are experiencing.