Toomas Vitsut

I would like to start by thanking the organizers, the City of Ancona and ALDE for offering me the opportunity to talk about our experiences in Baltic Sea Strategy, about our lessons in building up the macro regions and to demonstrate that we are committed to the successful development of the Baltic Sea Strategy.

Estoniais the only country in the world that calls the Baltic Sea the “Western Sea”. For the Finns it is the “Eastern Sea”, for Swedes, Danes and Germans it is Ostsee; for Latvians, Lithuanians and Poles and for the rest of the world, it is known as the Baltic Sea.

Speaking about the Baltic Sea Strategy I am pleased to note that it has taken only two years of the development of the Baltic Sea Strategy to reach the stage where we can discuss the practical implementation of the Strategy. European Strategy for the Baltic Sea region was accepted in October 2009, under the Sweden'sleadership of EU.The idea is to seek political solutions to problems that are too big for a single country or region, or too specific for the EU: the Baltic Sea hosts eight member states of the European Union. It is close to one third of the EU and so a developing macro-region of Europe.

The Baltic Sea strategy has several objectives. Besides environmental issueswe are focusing a lot on economic issues. The main focus in this area is on cooperation of high-tech companies, establishing technological platforms and creating an international technological centre. It is just one of the many possibilities that the Baltic Sea Region Strategy offers. 

Allow me to remind that the four cornerstones of the Strategy are:

- To enable a sustainable environment

- To enhance the region’s prosperity

- To increase accessibility and attractiveness

- To ensure safety and security in the region.

It is equally important that all the states in the region are included. They should be represented on municipal level. The contribution of regional and local levels is even more essential as it is these levels that the implementation of the Strategy mostly depends on. Therefore, I would like to stress, that it is very important to involve and engage the regions and local governments to the early planning process. 

We must have a common goal and bottom-up initiative is needed here.

Just two weeks ago we had a First Annual Forum of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region in Tallinn.  The EU Commissioner for Regional Policy Mr Johannes Hahn characterised the strategy with three NOs:

NO further administration

NO rules

NO money.

What was the message? It was - the Strategy is purely the will of the Baltic Sea countries and that we have to use our own potential. The EU Commission only mediates the information and does not propose any new rules. And does not create any new institutions for the implementation.  It means NO further administration. How we can achieve our goals in this case? Putting our trust on current rules and institutions.The funding should come from the national and regional programmes, co-financed by Cohesion Policy and other national resources.

I will continue with concentrating on practical topics and examples we have carried out so far and which are important from the point of view of Tallinn.

The Baltic Sea Cities have established active regional institutions for our cooperation.

The Union of Baltic Cities (UBC) and Baltic Metropolis (BaltMet) are examples of intensive cooperation.

 There have been three main networks:

• The Baltic Palette
• The Baltic Metropolis Network
• Helsinki-Tallinn Euregio

First extensive experience of cooperation was The Baltic Palette, created in 1997.

Partners: Helsinki, Stockholm, Riga Region, St Petersburg, Leningrad oblast, Tallinn and its surrounding Harju County.

 For Tallinn it was a significant step in the quality of international cooperation and an experience of being part of “a bigger picture”, also getting to know personnel in the planning field around the Baltic Sea, at the same time solving the city's own problems, bringing new aspects of governance into the focus.

Second important network wasThe Baltic Sea Metropolises’ cooperation network, created in 2002, including eleven cities of the region, nine capitals (Berlin, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Vilnius and Warsaw) and the regional metropolis St. Petersburg and Copenhagen’s partner city (within Öresund co-operation) Malmö. This network laid basis for Tallinn's further development towards an innovative and learning city. The main goal of the network was to promote innovativeness and competitiveness in the Baltic Sea Region by engaging cities as well as academic and business partners into close cooperation.

Helsinki-Tallinn Euregio, a cross-border co-operation network that started its activities already in 1999 and was formally established as a non-profit association by its five members - City of Helsinki and Uusimaa Regional Council from Finland and City of Tallinn, Harju County Government and Union of Harju County Municipalities from Estonia - in 2003. It is a political discussion platform for the involved partners, initiator of cross-border contacts and networking and inter-mediator for cross-border cooperation.

From the beginning of its activities, Euregio has focused on knowledge intensive and very up-to-date aims, sometimes even “collecting the weak signals”: for example the Strategy Framework for 2009-2013 sets out three priorities: 

• increased interaction in spatial and regional planning;
• creation of innovative and a barrier free region with common well-functioning markets and
• A special priority devoted to development of Twin-region of Arts and Sciences, that is, Knowledge Arena.

In the last strategy period there is basic difference in goal-setting: if earlier the word used was “co-operation”, in this priorities' statements “integration” and twin-city/twin-region is used.

The long-perspective goal of Euregio is an integrated Helsinki-Tallinn region.

Helsinki-Tallinn twin-city region, sometimes called TallHel or HelTal, is seen as the driver of integration due to proximity of the capitals. Therefore Helsinki-Tallinn Euregio has initiated a project to discuss the improvement needs of the transport network in the viewpoint of businesses as well as officials planning the municipal services used by the mobile inhabitants of the region.

My suggestions/ideas for building up the macro region, for the cross-border co-opearation are:

Is added by a horizontal dimension: private actors – local governments – civil society organisations.

Finally – Last but not least:

Be open, share and learn – co-operation is between people, not the organisations.

Joint values unite!

WELCOME TO TALLINN, THE EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2011!