The Northern Dimension -Changing the European Economic Space by the cross-border regional cooperation between the Enlarged EU and Slavic Areas

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The Northern dimension (ND) is a regional policy of the EU covering not only regions around the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, but also north-west regions of Russia. ND is a microcosm of Europe itself. There are countries relatively small and proximate to Russia: members of both the EU and NATO (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Denmark); non-NATO country (Finland, Sweden); and non-EU country (Iceland, Norway). Therefore, ND could play the role of "a laboratory of making Europe without dividing".We studied ND as a special example in which cross-border regional cooperation at the micro-area level in the EU is linked to macro problems of reorganizing the European Economy Space between the Enlarged EU and Slavic Areas. The EU enlarged from 15 to 27 members in the period of the study. It means that coexistence with the neighbouring countries is more important than ever for the stability of the EU itself. As a result, the European Neighbourhood Policy was formed as a new tool of the EU. It opens up the possibility of "plurilateral open-regional governance" towards reorganizing the European Economic Space by cross-border regional cooperation between "in" and "out" of the EU, although it is on the process of development. It is the problem of ND itself. Although the originality of ND is fading, its concept lives in European Neighbourhood Policy. Even if the Russian factor is still an unstable element, there emerges the regional economic cooperation-"Baltic Sea Region" based on cross-border regional cooperation between business, government and academia (Triple Helix Model) as a result of groping to various kinds of cooperation in the area of the ND. Now we found the possibility of changing the European Economic Space by including the Russian factor in the growth factor in the ND.