From the outset, Baltic Sea regionalism was a project conceived to attain two major political goals. One was to provide a consolidation ground for regional cooperation between partners that share a similar normative background and are eager to pool resources for the sake of building a coherent regional society. Another priority for the Baltic Sea region was to engage Russia through a number of institutional bridges, such as city-to-city partnerships, trans-border Euroregions, and the Northern Dimension programme. While the first political goal of Baltic Sea regionalism has been rather successful, with a move to the next stage of cooperation, the second goal has, thus far, failed. Despite a mutual will for cooperation, the EUSBSR and the existing Pan-Baltic cooperation framework face challenges of governance. The high number of different but overlapping intergovernmental cooperation institutions has raised the issue of leadership for the strategy’s implementation. Furthermore, the involvement of Russia in regional cooperation and especially in the implementation of the EUSBSR is an increasing challenge, particularly in the era post the Ukraine crisis.

In the light of these developments and the Estonian presidency of the Council of the Baltic Sea States, these issues and in particular, future developments shall be discussed during the two-day conference at the University of Tartu, May 28-29, 2015.

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