In the contemporary policy debate on the EU's neighborhood, grand designs are transforming into more pragmatic considerations. This book examines regional cooperation among the countries of northern Europe, emphasizing the pitfalls and successes of engaging Russia. Drawing from the experiences of northern partnerships, the authors assess prospects for collaborating on energy, transportation, the environment, and public health. They conclude that practical regional cooperation with Russia can prove highly relevant not only for developing the EU's northern policy but also for working with Russia in general.

In the contemporary policy debate on the EU's neighbourhood, grand designs are transforming into more pragmatic considerations. This book examines regional cooperation among the countries in Europe's northern neighbourhood, with an emphasis on the pitfalls and successes of engaging Russia. Drawing from the experiences of northern partnerships, the authors assess prospects for extending collaboration on energy, transport, the environment and public health. They conclude that practical regional cooperation with Russia in the north can prove highly relevant not only for developing the EU's northern policy but also for working with Russia more generally.

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has evolved into one of the European Union's major foreign policy instruments and received considerable attention. However, other EU neighbourhood policies, and their relevance for the ENP, also require examination. The Arab uprisings, civil wars in Libya and Syria, the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the crisis in Ukraine and Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula have all brought the institutional design and tools of the ENP into question and a comparative perspective is crucial to understand EU neighbourhood policies in a wider sense. This timely book puts the ENP into context by exploring the major challenges and key lessons of the EU's other policy frameworks with neighbouring countries. Mapping the EU's bi-lateral and multilateral neighbourhood relations in comparison to the ENP and investigating the major challenges faced, it provides a comprehensive, up-to-date view of the EU's relations with its neighbours. Focusing on current affairs and future challenges, the comparison with the ENP and the lessons to be drawn, generate novel insights into the EU's closest external relations. This book will be of key interest to students and scholars studying European Politics, policies and comparative politics.

This study maps current and planned education and research cooperation that the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) have with Russia. The study includes bilateral, Nordic, regional, intergovernmental and EU levels, but focuses on the bilateral, national level. The study covers all the fields of research and all the educational levels: primary and upper-secondary schools, vocational, higher and adult education. This study is of use on both a national and international level. It serves both readers who wish to obtain an overview of cooperation in bilateral education and research between the Nordic countries and Russia, as well as readers interested in becoming acquainted with the various forms in which Nordic countries cooperate in the fields of education and research with Russia as a whole. This study, commissioned by the Nordic Council of Ministers, has been carried out by the Aleksanteri Institute, which is the Finnish Centre for Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Helsinki.

The Changing Politics of European Security explores the key security challenges confronting Europe, from relations with the US and Russia to the use of military force and the struggle against terrorism. In the future, the authors conclude, European states will act alone, independent of America, on security matters.

This book critically analyses the changing EU-Russian security environment in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, with a particular focus on northern Europe where the EU and the Russian Federation share a common border. Russian involvement in conflict situations in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood has drastically impacted the European security environment, leading to a resurgence of competitive great power relations. The book uses the EU-Russia interface at the borders of Finland and the European North as a prism through which interwoven external and internal security challenges can be explored. Security is considered in the broadest sense of the term, as the authors consider how the security environment is reflected politically, socially and culturally within European societies. The book analyses changing political language and concepts, institutional preparedness, border governance, human security, migration and wider challenges to societal resilience. Ultimately, the book investigates into Finland’s preparedness to address new global security challenges and to find solutions to them on an everyday level. This book will be an important guide for researchers and upper-level students of security, border studies, Russian and European studies, as well as to policy makers looking to develop a wider, contextualized understanding of the challenges to stability and security in different parts of Europe.

Approaches democratization of the European neighbourhood from two sides, first exploring developments in the states themselves and then examining what the European Union has been doing to promote the process.