Estonia in the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS)

Last updated: 22.10.2012

-	About the CBSS
-	Summit Meetings of the Heads of Government of CBSS
-	Most Important CBSS Co-operation Areas
-	CBSS Task Forces, Working Groups and Other Structures
-	CBSS Partners and Co-operation Institutions
-	Documents

Estonia in the CBSS

The Council of Baltic Sea States (CBSS) was created in March of 1992 when the foreign ministers of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia as well as representatives of the European Commission met in Copenhagen at the invitation of the foreign ministers of Denmark and Germany. The goal of the meeting was to strengthen and intensify co-operation among the Baltic Sea states.

The meeting ended with the approval of the Copenhagen Declaration, which became the basis for the foundation of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS). Iceland joined the CBSS in May of 1995 during a meeting of the foreign ministers in Gdansk. The European Commission is the 12^th member of the CBSS and participates in the council’s work.

Today there are also ten observing nations participating in the work of the CBSS: Ukraine, the USA, Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain, Romania, and Belarus.

The highest working level of the CBSS is the Session of the Foreign Ministers. Ministerial sessions take place once every two years. The last ministerial session, which was the 17^th one held, took place on 5 February 2012 in Plön, Germany. It was an extraordinary meeting that was held to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the creation of the CBSS. During the meeting in Plön the foreign ministers approved a declaration on the energy security of the region.

The next meeting of the CBSS foreign ministers will take place in June 2013 in Kaliningrad, Russia.

Meeting of the foreign ministers in Plön, 5 February 2012.

The summit meetings of the heads of government of the Baltic Sea states are held every two years. The meetings do not belong to the formal structure of the CBSS, but they provide the overall political guidance for its work. Due to the increasing role of the CBSS as the co-ordinator of regional co-operation within the group of CBSS states, the importance of the summits for developing the CBSS and evaluating its work has grown as well.

There have been nine summits: Visby (3-4 May 1996), Riga (22-23 January 1998), Kolding (12-13 April 2000), St. Petersburg (10 June 2002), Laulasmaa (at the end of Estonia’s presidency, 21 June 2004), Reykjavik (7-8 June 2006), Riga (3-4 June 2008), Vilnius (1-2 June 2010), and Stralsund (30-31 May 2012). The next meeting of the heads of government of CBSS states will take place in Finland in 2013.

The summit of the heads of government in Stralsund, 31 May 2012

Declaration of the Presidency of the CBSS at the Meeting of the Prime Ministers in Stralsund, 21.05.2012.

The most important co-operation areas for the Council of the Baltic Sea States were approved during the chairmanship of Latvia in 2008, when a comprehensive reform programme was implemented. The goal was to make the work of the organisation more effective, as well as more project-based and relying more on co-operation between experts. Better co-ordinated co-operation with other networks in the region was also an aim of the reform. At the meeting of the heads of government on 3-4 June 2008, the long-term future priorities of the CBSS were established, which are:

Environment
Economic development
Energy
Education and culture
The safety of civil society

Declaration of the Riga Summit of the CBSS, which launched the CBSS reform programme.

In between the Foreign Ministers' Sessions, the work of the CBSS is co-ordinated by the Committee of Senior Officials (CSO), which holds its meetings approximately once a month. It is the main institution that co-ordinates the activities of all the working groups and is the main structural unit that gathers information about co-operation in all fields.

The CBSS established its Permanent Secretariat, located in Stockholm, in 1998 in order to assist the chairing country. It provides technical, organisational and analytical support. The Secretariat also organises and preserves documents tied to the council’s work, publishes the newsletter “Baltinfo”, and maintains the CBSS webpage.

To ensure the continuity and smoothness of the work of the institution, a troika format is used. It consists of the previous, present and upcoming holder of the chairmanship. At the moment Germany, Russia and Finland are the members of the troika.

The chairmanship of the CBSS lasts for a period that runs from the start of July to the end of June. The foreign minister of the chairing nation is the political organiser of the council’s work; he also leads the work of the CBSS. The state that holds the chair of the CBSS determines the main direction of its work in the chairing programme.

As of July 2012 the chairman of the CBSS is Russia. Russia has set the following four co-operation areas as priorities for its chairmanship:

Further developing co-operation in the areas of modernisation and innovation
Developing the network for public-private partnership (PPP)
Promoting tolerance and combating radicalism and extremism
Promoting contacts among people and simplifying the visa regime

More information on Russia’s CBSS chairmanship can be found here.

For Estonia, the CBSS is one of many multilateral intergovernmental co-operation organisations in the Baltic Sea region. Estonia is one of the biggest supporters of making the CBSS more practical and project-based. We feel that co-operation among the various co-operation formats in the Baltic region could be more visible, the division of roles more clear, and the activities better co-ordinated. The operational network created by the CBSS and the functioning forum for political dialogue in the form of meetings of ministers or heads of state is very important to Estonia.

Estonia has been the chairman of the CBSS from 1993-1994 and 2003-2004. Estonia’s next chairmanship of the CBSS will be from July 2014 – June 2015. Estonia will base its chairmanship priorities on continuity as well as its own established long-term priorities like the environment, human trafficking, education, and culture, as well as co-operation in the preservation of national heritage.