Reflections on EU geopolitics: Consolidation, neighbourhood and civil society in the reordering of european space

Geopolitics

Volumn 16, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 146-175

  Scott, James Wesley ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND   (Finland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CIVIL SOCIETY; CROSS-BORDER RELATIONS; DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION; EUROPEAN UNION; GEOPOLITICS; INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION;

EUROPE;

EID: 79951833414     PISSN: 14650045     EISSN: 15573028     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2010.493781     Document Type: Article

References (126)

1. See P. Joenniemi, Re-Negotiating Europe's Identity: The European Neighbourhood Policy as a Form of Differentiation', Journal of Borderlands Studies 23/2 (2008) pp. 83-94
2. D. Newman, The Resilience of Territorial Conflict in an Era of Globalization', in M. Kahler and B. Walter (eds.), Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006) pp. 85-110.
3. L. Bialasiewicz, S. Elden, and J. Painter, The Constitution of EU Territory', Comparative European Politics 3 (2005) pp. 333-363.
4. V. Bachmann and J. Sidaway, Zivilmacht Europa: A Critical Geopolitics of the European Union as a Global Power', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34/1 (2009) pp. 94-109.
5. H. van Houtum and F. Boedeltje, Questioning the EU's Neighbourhood Geo-Politics: Introduction to a Special Issue', Geopolitics 16/1 (2010) this issue.
6. See M. Leonard, Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century (London: Fourth Estate 2005)
7. I. Manners, The Normative Ethics of the European Union', International Affairs 84/19 (2008) pp. 45-60.
8. See J. Scott and H. van Houtum, Reflections on EU Territoriality and the 'Bordering' of Europe', Political Geography 28/5 (2009) pp. 271-273.
9. M. S. Filtenborg, S. Gänzle, and E. Johannson, An Alternative Theoretical Approach to EU Foreign Policy: 'Network Governance' and the Case of the Northern Dimension Initiative', Cooperation and Conflict 37/4 (2002) pp. 387-407
10. A. Warleigh, Europeanizing Civil Society: NGOs as Agents of Political Socialization', Journal of Common Market Studies 39/4 (2001) pp. 619-639.
11. Reference is made here to research carried out within the scope of the international projects EUDIMENSIONS: Local Dimensions of a Wider European Neighbourhood: Developing Political Community Through Practices and Discourses of Cross-Border Co-Operation (contract CITCT- 2005-028804), financed by the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme for Research (see )
12. Security and Development Research within the Wider Europe Initiative Security Cluster, funded by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (contract: HEL 8207-75).
13. K. E. Smith, The Outsiders: The European Neighbourhood Policy', International Affairs 81/4 (2005) pp. 757-773.
14. J. Scott and J. Büchner, EUDIMENSIONS Final Report (2009), available at
15. G. Ó Tuathail, A. Herod, and S. M. Roberts, Negotiating Unruly Problematics', in A. Herod, G. Ó Tuathail, and S. M. Roberts (eds.), An Unruly World? Globalization, Governance and Geography (London and New York: Routledge 1998) pp. 1-24.
16. H. N. Nicol, Coding Cuba: Foreign Policy, Popular Perception and Canada-Cuban Geopolitics', paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 50th Annual Convention: 'Exploring the Past, Anticipating the Future', New York, May 2009, available at http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p310645_index.html.
17. S. Dalby, Global Environment/ Local Culture: Metageographies of Post-Colonial Resistance', Studies in Political Economy 67 (2002) pp. 55-82
18. K. J. Dodds, Geopolitics. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007).
19. G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby, Rethinking Geopolitics. Towards a Critical Geopolitics', in G. Ò Tuathail, and S. Dalby (eds.), Rethinking Geopolitics (London and New York: Routledge 1998) pp. 1-15.
20. J. Agnew, Geopolitics. Re-visioning World Politics, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge 2003)
21. Z. Laidi, A World Without Meaning. The Crisis of Meaning in International Politics (London and New York: Routledge 1998).
22. S. Chaturvedi, Geopolitics of India's Cultural Diversity: Conceptualization and Contestations', Groupe des Etudes et Recherches sur les Mondialisations - GERM Ref. 000011963 (2003), available at , accessed 18 June 2007
23. S. Chaturvedi, Between Belonging(s) and Bounding(s): Representations and Resistance in Post/Colonial Sri Lanka', Terra: Journal of Geographical Society of Finland 117/3 (2005) pp. 202-210.
24. See P. J. Taylor and C. Flint, Political Geography. World Economy, Nation-State and Locality (Harlow: Prentice Hall 2000).
25. A review of the geopolitical literature reminds us of the embeddedness of past and present geopolitical paradigms in wider academic discourses and historical contexts. Geodeterminism helped provide the theoretical foundation and scientific rationale for the imperialist geopolitics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - it was also appropriated by national-socialist ideologues in order to legitimise Germany's aggressive territorial politics between 1933 and 1945. Determinism would be replaced after World War II by a generally positivist drive for objective facts, scientific rigour and 'value-free' studies of borders. More often than not, empiricist geopolitics served to legitimise US-American hegemony as a guarantor of world peace and stability. The complexities of globalisation and, finally, the post-Cold War 'disorder', revealed in turn the deficiencies of empiricism, description and categorisation, thus opening space for more critical perspectives
26. J. Scott, The EU and 'Wider Europe': Toward an Alternative Geopolitics of Regional Cooperation?', Geopolitics 10/3 (2005) pp. 429-454.
27. I. Neumann, Uses of the Other. The 'East' in European Identity Formation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1999).
28. B. Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter. Why Social Inquiry Fails and How it Can Succeed Again (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001).
29. J. Zielonka, Europe as Empire: the Nature of the Enlarged European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006). Or to quote Jose Manuel Barroso's famous comment made in Strasbourg on 10 July 2007: 'What we have is the first non-imperial empire. We have twenty-seven countries that fully decided to work together and to pool their sovereignty. I believe it is a great construction and we should be proud of it'. These and other statements made by Barroso have been taken up by Eurosceptics of all ideological colours. Most revealing are the reactions of extreme conservative and right-wing groups who see the European 'empire' as signalling the victory of multiculturalist cosmopolitanism over the nation-state
30. See, for example, the Danish website Euro-Med.dk ().
31. Read, for example, Garton Ash's article, Europe is Failing Two Life and Death Tests. We Must Act Together, Now', The Guardian, 8 Jan. 2009.
32. J. Anderson (ed.), Geopolitics of European Union Enlargement: The Fortress Empire (London: Routledge 2007).
33. B. Dimitrovova, Re-Bordering of Europe. The Case of the European Neighbourhood Policy, doctoral dissertation, Queen's University Belfast, Ireland, 2009.
34. K. Booth (ed.), Critical Security Studies and World Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner 2005)
35. K. Fierke, Critical Approaches to International Security (Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press 2007);
36. K. Krause and M. C. Williams (eds.), Critical Security Studies. Concepts and Cases (London: UCL Press 1997). Critical security studies (CSS) is a relatively new way of thinking about and studying geopolitical issues such as security. CSS rejects the (neo-) realism, structuralism and statism that continues to inform much scholarly work on international relations, security and geopolitics in the post-Cold War context. It also openly criticises the state-centrist assumptions of statecraft and aims for a fundamental re-conceptualisation of the notion of 'security'. CSS not only provides a post-positivist arena for debate on geopolitics and security studies it also helps us to think beyond misleading distinctions, such as those between 'internal' and 'external' security.
37. Flyvbjerg (note 20).
38. Chaturvedi, Geopolitics of India's Cultural Diversity' (note 16)
39. Chaturvedi, Between Belonging(s) and Bounding(s)' (note 16).
40. Newman (note 1) p. 88.
41. L. O'Dowd, The Changing Significance of European Borders', Regional and Federal Studies 12/4 (2002) pp. 13-36.
42. M. Fritsch, European Territorialization and the Eastern Neighbourhood: Spatial Development Co-operation between the EU and Russia', European Journal of Spatial Development No. 35 (2009), available at , p. 7.
43. C. O'Dwyer, Reforming Regional Governance in East Central Europe: Europeanization or Domestic Politics as Usual?', East European Politics and Societies 20/2 (2006) pp. 219-253.
44. Europeanisation is understood here in terms of a diffusion of norms regarding political agendas and procedures, social values and societal self-definitions (see, for example T. Diez, A. Agnantopoulos, and A. Kaliber, Turkey, Europeanization and Civil Society: Introduction', South European Society and Politics 10/1 (2005) pp. 1-15).
45. A. Faludi, The European Model of Society', in A. Faludi (ed.), Territorial Cohesion and the European Model of Society (Cambridge: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2007) pp. 1-22
46. O. Jensen and T. Richardson, Making European Space. Mobility, Power and Territorial Identity (London and New York: Routledge 2004).
47. B. Dimitrovova, The Re-Making of Europe's Borders Through the European Neighbourhood Policy', Journal of Borderlands Studies 23/1 (2008) pp. 53-68.
48. A. Gawrich, I. Melnykovska, and R. Schweickert, Neighbourhood Europeanisation through ENP - the Case of Ukraine', Journal of Common Market Studies 48/5 (2010) pp. 1209-1235
49. I. Sagan and R. Lee, Spatialities of Regional Transformation in Central Europe and the Administrative Spaces of the EU', in I. Sagan and H. Halkier (eds.), Regionalism Contested. Institution, Society and Governance (Ashgate: Aldershot 2005) pp. 163-176.
50. Those who argue that there is in effect no EU Common Foreign and Security Policy are clearly mistaken. The reason for this error of judgement is an inability to conceive such policies beyond the traditional contexts of formal state-oriented policy. The ENP is a very influential instrument indeed and the indecisiveness it 'suffers' from is typical of the vicissitudes facing more traditional foreign policy at the level of nation-states. The promise of the ENP, however, is to do more than traditional policies dare venture - to promote deep regional co-operation through shared political agendas and co-ownership of co-operation programmes.
51. Laidi (note 15).
52. Scott, The EU and 'Wider Europe (note 18).
53. Admittedly (perhaps somewhat ironically in this case) the geopolitical concept of Europe as a 'pan-Idea' is not new, Karl Haushofer's depiction of a European geopolitics saw a continent unified by history and a colonial empire pitted against 'Pan-Slavic', 'Pan-American' and British imperial spaces.
54. See, for example, C. K. Ansell, Territoriality, Authority and Democracy', in C.K. Ansell, and G. Di Palma (eds.), Restructuring Territoriality. Europe and the United States Compared, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004) pp. 225-245
55. V. Mamadouh, The Territoriality of the European Union and the Territorial Features of the European Union', Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 94/2 (2001) pp. 420-436.
56. Fritsch (note 30)
57. Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee. Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion. Turning Territorial Diversity into Strength (Brussels: Commission of the European Communities 2008).
58. Faludi (note 33) pp. 1-22.
59. The Lisbon and Göteborg Agendas aim, respectively, at economic growth and sustainability. The Lisbon Agenda specifically signals a change in policy orientation at the EU level in which 'neoliberal' goals of competitiveness and greater local and regional self-sufficiency are marginalising more traditional approaches of economic solidarity and redistribution. These agendas are clearly manifested in the funding priorities of the EU's 2007-2013 programming period: while regional and social development funds aim at an internal consolidation through stabilising and securing the enlarged Union, they also are seen as a means of preparing regions and localities for considerably reduced subsidies in the future.
60. The European Regional Development Fund was established in 1975 in order to address industrial crises and underdevelopment within member states. During the first years of the Fund's existence, the European Commission acted as administrator on behalf of national development interests, disbursing regional assistance according to fixed quotas. However progressive reforms of the ERDF in the 1980s, accompanied by the accession of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain to the Community, established a new regional development agenda with a much more differentiated approach. With the establishment in 1988 of the Structural Funds (in effect consolidating all regional and sectoral aid programmes within one policy instrument) regional policy was essentially de-nationalised; the EU assumed a major role in defining specific target areas and regional problems to be addressed.
61. Structural initiatives have included RESIDER (restructuring of steelmaking regions), LEADER (development strategies for rural regions), KONVER (conversion of military installations to civilian use), RENAVAL (assistance to regions characterised by large shipbuilding industries in crisis), and RECHAR (assistance to mining regions). INTERREG, now in its fourth phase (2007-2013), has supported numerous transboundary and transnational co-operation projects between regions.
62. Needless to say, the process of region-building within the EU has, of course, been uneven. This is partly due to the lack of a unitary framework that defines regions as such, e.g., in political and functional terms. Whilst often based upon historical and cultural traditions, other regionalising policies have been adopted by states as a means of rationalising administration, managing internal change and satisfying EU demands. As a result, the participation of regions within national and European policy-making processes is dependent on their status within national contexts.
63. Bialasiewicz, Elden, and Painter (note 2) p. 335.
64. J. Scott, A Networked Space of Meaning? Spatial Politics as Geostrategies of European Integration', Space and Polity 6/2 (2002) pp. 147-167.
65. E. Bojar, Euroregions in Poland', Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 87/5 (2008) pp. 442-447.
66. N. B. Groth, Urban Systems Between Policy and Geography', Regional Studies 34/6 (2000) pp. 571-580.
67. Fritsch (note 30)
68. Scott, A Networked Space of Meaning?' (note 48).
69. European Commission, ESDP-European Spatial Development Perspective. Towards Balanced and Sustainable Development of the Territory of the European Union (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities 1999).
70. B. Waterhout, Territorial Cohesion: the Underlying Discourses', in A. Faludi (ed.), Territorial Cohesion and the European Model of Society (Cambridge: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2007) pp. 37-59.
71. C. S. Browning and P. Joeniemmi, Geostrategies of the European Neighbourhood Policy', European Journal of International Relations 14/3 (2008) pp. 519-551.
72. See S. Lavenex, EU External Governance in 'Wider Europe', Journal of European Public Policy 11/4 (2004) pp. 680-700.
73. According to the ENP strategy paper (Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission, European Neighbourhood Policy. Strategy Paper, COM, 2004, 373 Final, p. 3)
74. The privileged relationship with neighbours will build on mutual commitment to common values principally within the fields of the rule of law, good governance, the respect for human rights, including minority rights, the promotion of good neighbourly relations, and the principles of market economy and sustainable development.' It then states: 'The level of ambition of the EU's relationships with its neighbours will take into account the extent to which these values are effectively shared'.
75. Above and beyond ENP, the Europeanisation of the Neighbourhood is being promoted through other means, such as research and education (priority 2.6 in the EU-Ukraine Action Plan as 'people to people contacts'). The EU's Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technology (FP7), for example, contributes to the envisaged construction of a European Research Area (ERA) by promoting networks of universities and research teams not only within the EU but also internationally.
76. Commission of the European Communities, Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council Laying Down General Provisions Establishing a European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument, COM (2004) 628 final
77. W. Wallace, Looking after the Neighbourhood: Responsibilities for the EU-25', Policy Papers of Notre Europe-Groupement des Etudes et de Recherches 4 (2003), available at , accessed 8 March 2010.
78. While formally included in the ENP, no agreements have been established to date with Belarus, Libya or Syria.
79. The EU's security policies with regard to the Neighbourhood are targeted at enhancing public security through combating environmental hazards, terrorism, organised crime, smuggling and other illegal activities. At the same time, peace and stability are to be achieved through closer economic cooperation and the avoidance of divisive gaps in living standards.
80. Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: Wider Europe - Neighbourhood: A New Framework for Relations with our Eastern and Southern Neighbours, COM (2003) 104 final
81. Commission of the European Communities, European Neighbourhood Policy Strategy, COM (2004) 373, p. 3.
82. See M. Emerson, The Wider Europe Matrix (Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies 2004)
83. A. Guterres, The European Treaties Revisited: What Role for Europe in the Globalised World?, speech delivered at a conference at the Walter Hallstein-Institute for European Constitutional Law, Humboldt University, Berlin, 7 May 2001.
84. As defined in Commission of the European Communities, Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament (note 55) pp. 11-12.
85. Commission of the European Communities, European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument. Cross-Border Cooperation. Strategy Paper 2007-2013, Indicative Programme 2007-2013 (Brussels: Commission of the European Communities 2006) p. 6.
86. Commission of the European Communities, A Stronger European Neighbourhood Policy (Brussels: Commission of the European Communities 2007) p. 11.
87. Commission of the European Communities, Non-Paper: ENP - a Path Towards Further Economic Integration (Brussels: Commission of the European Communities 2006) p. 7.
88. Commission of the European Communities, European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (note 64).
89. See note 8.
90. K. Nielsen, E. Berg, and G. Roll, Undiscovered Avenues? Estonian Civil Society Organisations as Agents of Europeanisation', TRAMES 13/3 (2009) pp. 248-264.
91. A. Skvortova, The Impact of EU Enlargement on Moldovan-Romanian Relations', in J. Scott (ed.), EU Enlargement, Region-building and Shifting Borders of Inclusion and Exclusion (Aldershot: Ashgate 2006) pp. 133-148.
92. A. Demidov and J. Laine, Civil Society Organisations as Drivers of Cross-Border Interaction: On Whose terms, for Which Purpose?', in H. Eskelinen, I. Liikanen, and J. Scott (eds.), On the Edge of Neighbourhood: Regional Dimensions of the EU-Russia Interface (London and New York: Routledge forthcoming 2011).
93. E. Belokurova and M. Nozhenko, Regional Identity-Building and Cross-Border Interaction in Northwest Russia', in H. Eskelinen, I. Liikanen, and J. Scott (eds.), On the Edge of Neighbourhood: Regional Dimensions of the EU-Russia Interface (London and New York: Routledge forthcoming 2011).
94. G. Popescu, The Conflicting Logics of Crossborder Reterritorialization: Geopolitics of Euroregions in Eastern Europe', Political Geography 27/4 (2008) pp. 418-438
95. G. Popescu Geopolitics of Scale and Cross-Border Cooperation in Eastern Europe: The Case of the Romanian-Ukrainian-Moldovan Borderlands', in J. Scott (ed.), EU Enlargement, Region Building and Sifting Borders of Inclusion and Exclusion (Aldershot: Ashgate 2006) pp. 35-51.
96. Faludi (note 33) pp. 1-22.
97. Critical observers (including the author) see this canon of values with some justified reservations. For example, the increasing neo-liberal thrust of EU policies (e.g., as expressed in the Lisbon Agenda) does little to support goals of social solidarity, even though billions of euros are being spent on the most disadvantaged regions of the EU. Indeed, undermining the 'European' welfare state would torpedo the project of a coherent 'Social Europe'!
98. In its report A Stronger European Neighbourhood Policy the Commission states (note 64, p. 1):
99. The ENP is a partnership for reform that offers 'more for more': the more deeply a partner engages with the Union, the more fully the Union can respond, politically, economically and through financial and technical cooperation. Ultimately, what is at stake is the EU's ability to develop an external policy complementary to enlargement that is effective in promoting transformation and reform'.
100. P. Bilgin, A Return to 'Civilisational Geopolitics' in the Mediterranean? Changing Geopolitical Images of the European Union and Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era', Geopolitics 9/2 (2004) pp. 269-291;
101. see also Smith (note 9).
102. Dimitrovova, Re-Bordering of Europe (note 24) p. 208.
103. There is, of course, another aspect to the question of European values that must be mentioned here - that of the contestedness of what constitutes 'European identity'. Cultural concepts of Europe as a locus of Christendom and of the Enlightenment and thus based on civilisational, cultural and religious categories have emerged in media representations and in political discourses within member states of the EU (for example, in Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Poland). Contrary to what was expected when membership negotiations with Central and Eastern European countries were initiated, the last phases of EU enlargement have not always received the warmest welcome in Western European countries. Nationalist populism has been strengthened by threat scenarios of an invasion of cheap labour and/or by islamophobic readings of a possible Turkish accession to the EU. Partly as a result of this, the reclamation of national identity and sovereignty and the emphasis of cultural-civilisational difference in defining what is and what is not 'European' compete rather strongly with more inclusive notions of Europeanness.
104. See S. Rosenberger, The Other Side of the Coin: Populism, Nationalism, and the European Union', Harvard International Review 26/1 (2004) pp. 22-26
105. see also the newsletters of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, available at The EUMC has extensively criticised populist tendencies in EU and national political debates (see, for example, Newsletter 15, Nov. 2002).
106. T. Zhurzhenko, Regional Cooperation in the Ukrainian-Russian Borderlands: Wider Europe or Post-Soviet Integration?', in J. Scott (ed.), EU Enlargement, Region-Building and Shifting Borders of Inclusion and Exclusion (Aldershot: Ashgate 2006) p. 100.
107. T. Diez, Why the EU Can Nonetheless Be Good for Cyprus', JEMIE: Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe 2/2002 (2002), available at , accessed 15 July 2004.
108. See Alison Smale and Dan Bilefsky, Fighting EU 'Enlargement Fatigue, International Herald Tribune, 16 June 2006, available at www.iht.com/articles/2006/19/news/eu.php.
109. H. Van Houtum and F. Boedeltje, Europe's Shame. Death at the Borders of the EU', Antipode 41/2 (2009) pp. 226-230
110. H. Van Houtum and R. Pijpers, The European Union as a Gated Community of Fear: The Two-faced Border and Immigration Regime of the EU', Antipode 39/2 (2007) pp. 291-309.
111. See, for example, Lavenex (note 55).
112. Ansell (note 39).
113. Gawrich, Melnykovska, and Schweickert (note 35)
114. I. Melnykovska and R. Schweickert, Bottomup or Top-down: What Drives the Convergence of Ukraine's Institutions Towards European Standards?', Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 8/4(2008) pp. 445-468.
115. As reported in La UE gana peso en Moldavia', El Pais, 25 Jan. 2007.
116. Effective' border management is a keystone of Neighbourhood policy. According to the EUBAM website, Borders are a vital tool in promoting a safe environment in which trade and people to people contacts can flourish. Effective border management should facilitate, not hinder, trade and contacts across the border. Within its own area, the EU has worked for over 50 years to break down barriers between its Member States that can hamper trade and personal, family and cultural contact. Under the EU's Neighbourhood Policy, the EU is reaching out to its neighbours in order to promote prosperity, common values and security as well as to help break down trade barriers'. EUBAM European Border Assistance Mission to Moldavia and Ukraine (source: EUBAM website, http://www.eubam.org/, accessed 16 June 2007).
117. I. Liikanen, New Neighbourhood and Cross-Border Region Building: Identity Politics of CBC on the Finnish-Russian Border', Journal of Borderlands Studies 23/2 (2008) pp. 19-38.
118. I. Liikanen and J. Laine, Civil Society Cooperation in Russian-Finnish Karelia: A Clash of Territorialities?', Journal of European Integration 33/5 (2010) pp. 457-474.
119. Commission of the European Communities, European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument. Country Strategy Paper 2007-2013, Ukraine (Brussels: Commission of the European Communities 2007).
120. Dimitrovova, Re-Bordering of Europe (note 24).
121. See K. Raik, Promoting Democracy through Civil Society: How to Step Up the EU's Policy Towards the Eastern Neighbourhood', CEPS Working Paper 237 (2006).
122. Scott and Büchner (note 10).
123. See the Cordis website on security research at , accessed 23 March 2010.
124. To wit: 'It is necessary to support effective cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation with the Community's neighbouring countries where this is necessary to ensure that the regions of the Member States which border third countries can be effectively assisted in their development. Accordingly, it is appropriate to authorize on an exceptional basis the financing of assistance from the ERDF for projects located on the territory of third countries where they are for the benefit of the regions of the Community'. Text taken from Regulation (EC) No. 1080/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 July 2006 on the European Regional Development Fund and repealing Regulation (EC) No. 1783/1999, published in the Official Journal of the European Union, L210/1, 31.7.2006.
125. Nielsen, Berg, and Roll (note 68).
126. As the situation stands now, the majority of Finnish CSOs with working contacts to Russian counterparts operate across the border more or less independently of EU initiatives and policies. Indeed, the dynamics across the Finnish-Russian border can be characterised as more pragmatic - it is not the aim of this co-operation to focus solely on the democratisation of Russia or on building a Western type of civil society. Instead, the principal aim of Finnish-Russian civil society co-operation has been to solve practical problems, provide help and support Russians as they themselves build better preconditions to confront the specific conditions that have emerged as a result of Russia's own historical development.