Öresund and the Nordic countries

The Öresund Committee has enjoyed many years’ collaboration with the Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM) in several of the areas that are key to the work of the committee. Via a partnership programme for the regional sector, the NCM provides financial support to the border committees in the Nordic countries, both in the form of a base amount of funding, and in the form of additional resources to support specific projects within spheres that are accorded special priority in Nordic cooperation. Examples include the elimination of cross-border obstacles, innovation, energy, education, and language and culture.

The Öresund Committee works particularly closely with the NCM on issues related to cross-border obstacles, which rank high on the political agenda of both organisations. For several years the committee has contributed experience and solutions to what is widely known as the Schlüter Process, by which former Danish Prime Minister Poul Schlüter accumulated information on cross-border obstacles to report to the Nordic Council. In addition, the Nordic Council of Ministers has established a Freedom of Movement Forum under the aegis of the Nordic Prime Ministers to work for the elimination of cross-border obstacles in Scandinavia. Sweden’s representative on the forum is Pia Kinhult of Region Skåne, who also sits on the Öresund Committee.

 

The GOLIN project (“Cross-Border Regional Optimal Solutions in Scandinavia”) is a flagship among Nordic projects – a collaborative venture that ran between 2003 and 2005 and in which the Öresund Committee and three other border committees made a number of concrete proposals to promote labour market mobility across national borders.

 

Collaboration in the form of the Scandinavian Arenaseeks to create closer links between the growth regions of Öresund and Gothenburg-Oslo (including Halland). Cooperation here aims to create an attractive, cohesive region that combines sustainability and competitiveness with an appeal that extends not only throughout Europe, but globally. Almost 7 million people live in the corridor that runs north from the Öresund Region to Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast, and onwards to the Norwegian capital, Oslo. The region includes two of Scandinavia’s capital cities, several major urban centres and some of Scandinavia’s most important hubs for logistics, research and education, complemented by a unique offering of cultural events and tourist attractions.

 

A political steering committee has been appointed, with representatives from both the Öresund and Gothenburg-Oslo regions. This committee has already identified a number of strategic areas for collaboration, where there is a potential for setting up umbrella networks and initiating concrete projects.

 

Euroregions are the name given to trans-national cooperation structures in Europe. Within Scandinavia we use the term “border committees”, but in principle these committees – for example, the Öresund Committee – fulfil the same function.

 

At the invitation of the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Öresund Committee has participated in a project for the development of Euroregions/border committees in the European Union’s eastern border regions. This project, known as the Baltic Euroregional Network or BEN project, ran for three years from 2005 to 2007. The objectives of the BEN project were:

 
Partners throughout the entire Baltic Sea region
The BEN project involved a total of 35 partners among regional and trans-national organisations from nine countries throughout the Baltic region, including Russia and Belarus. Collaboration took the form of a number of seminars and workshops in the member states, to exchange knowledge, experience and ideas on topics such as the labour market and cross-border obstacles, infrastructure and physical planning, information and media, tourism, border checks, and discussions with national authorities, etc. Among the most impressive results were the increase in institutional capacity, the structural expansion of knowledge and the creation of new networks.

The project was coordinated from the Nordic Council of Ministers’ office in Lithuania. One of the co-applicants was the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), a political forum for regional inter-governmental cooperation. In addition to funding from the participating organisations, the project was co-financed under the Interreg IIIB Baltic Sea programme. The project was terminated in 2007.