This is the fifth volume of The NEBI Yearbook, whose aim it is to provide a balanced picture of integration in the North European and Baltic Sea areas. The special focus of NEBI 2003 is to survey the lessons learned and the experience gained as a result of a decade of intensive pan-Baltic and Barents co-operation made possible as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Like the previous volumes, NEBI 2003 contains a unique Statistical Section covering the entire NEBI area.

The NEBI Yearbook 2000 aims to provide a balanced picture of both the integrationist opportunities and disintegrationist pressures in the North European and Baltic Sea area - a region with over 50 million inhabitants and great economic and trading potentials. It brings together a wide range of scientific methods and perspectives in addition to a comprehensive statistical section with information found nowhere else. The result is a unique source of up-to-date knowledge of this increasingly important European region.

Thorvald Stoltenberg Ambassador Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board Most of us have been overwhelmed by the speed and extent of the changes that have been taking place in Europe since the late 1980s. Over the span of a few years, we have witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the unification of Ger many. This process has had far-reaching implications for Northern Europe: the Baltic states have attained independence, and with the establishment of the Baltic Sea regional co-operation and the Barents co-operation, a new type of East-West relations has come into being. The process of change continues. Its latest manifestation is the agreement between Russia and NATO, and NATO and EU enlargement is expected to take place over the next few years. With such far-reaching transformations, we need to reflect on what is hap pening. We need a more coherent picture of the new situation in Northern Europe and of where we are heading. This Yearbook is an attempt to fulfil this need. I would like to thank the editors for taking this initiative, which has been long awaited by those of us who have been actively interested in the improved relations between the former East and the old West that have been made possible by the end of the Cold War - and particularly in the new opportunities for cross-border co-operation and integra tion in the North European and Baltic space."

The NEBI Yearbook 1999 again aims to provide a balanced picture of both the integrationist opportunities and disintegrationist pressures in the entire North European and Baltic Sea area - a vast region with over 50 million inhabitants and great economic and trading potentials and crossing some of the most formidable historical and current divides of Europe. For this purpose it brings together 30 scholars from 10 countries covering a wide range of scientific fields that do not usually collaborate.

The NEBI Yearbook 2001/2002 provides a balanced picture of integrationist developments in the North European and Baltic Sea area. For this purpose it brings together scholars from several countries and a wide range of scientific areas. The Yearbook emphasises all major aspects of integration, i.e. basic economic integration; environment and infrastructure; cross-border regional integration; and hard and soft security. The special focus of this volume is the impact of EU enlargement on developments in the North European and Baltic Sea area.

Thorvald Stoltenberg Ambassador Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board Most of us have been overwhelmed by the speed and extent of the changes that have been taking place in Europe since the late 1980s. Over the span of a few years, we have witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the unification of Ger many. This process has had far-reaching implications for Northern Europe: the Baltic states have attained independence, and with the establishment of the Baltic Sea regional co-operation and the Barents co-operation, a new type of East-West relations has come into being. The process of change continues. Its latest manifestation is the agreement between Russia and NATO, and NATO and EU enlargement is expected to take place over the next few years. With such far-reaching transformations, we need to reflect on what is hap pening. We need a more coherent picture of the new situation in Northern Europe and of where we are heading. This Yearbook is an attempt to fulfil this need. I would like to thank the editors for taking this initiative, which has been long awaited by those of us who have been actively interested in the improved relations between the former East and the old West that have been made possible by the end of the Cold War - and particularly in the new opportunities for cross-border co-operation and integra tion in the North European and Baltic space."

Bjllrn Tore Godal Norwegian Ambassador to Germany Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board Several of the contributions to the present volume of The NEBI Yearbook have been inspired by the fact that roughly speaking, ten years have passed since the first steps were taken to initiate cross-border co-operation in the Barents and Baltic Sea areas. One of the most important co-operative organisations in the European Northeast, i. e. The Council of the Baltic Sea States, was launched in 1992. The Barents Euro Arctic Council was established in 1993. An avalanche of co-operative and cross-border initiatives has since hit this part of Europe with all kinds of actors participating - states, regional and municipal authorities, univer sities, national organisations, businesses and private interests. Even international organisations and actors from outside the immediate NEBI area have taken a special interest in this dynamic part of the world. Among the most important is the European Union, whose Finnish-inspired Northern Dimension initiative has become a permanent fixture. As many of the chapters in NEBI 2003 testifY, integration in the NEB I area - across old political and ideological borders and cultural and socio-economic divides that are among the most pronounced anywhere in the world - has on the whole been a great success."

Thorvald Stoltenberg President of the Norwegian Red Cross Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board Despite the very optimistic language on the imminence of new accessions to the European Union that came out of the June 2001 European Council in Gothen burg, it will serve no good purpose to neglect the fact that EU membership for the Central and Eastern European applicants remains a difficult process. Painful experience makes it prudent to exercise caution in predicting developments with in the European Union. Negotiations may drag out, snags may appear and some thing may happen on the way to ratification. So perhaps it is wise to take a broad er view of European integration - and therefore integration within the North European, Barents and Baltic Sea region that is the focus of this Yearbook. EU membership for those countries that are able to satisfy the Copenhagen requirements - and the chapters of the acquis communautaire that have subse quently been specified - is certainly a prize worth fighting for. But all is not lost if some of the applicants end up not joining the Union as a result of the current enlargement round. Even more important than formal membership is the process of growing together that has taken place simultaneously with the membership negotiations. We are dealing here with integration in the real world of trade, investments, division of labour, politics, environment, hard and soft security, people-to-people relations etc."

Thorvald Stoltenberg President of the Norwegian Red Cross Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board The 2000 edition of the NEBI Yearbook goes to press a few weeks before the of the fIxed 0resund Link between Copenhagen and Malmo, and the opening celebrations of this magnifIcent construction have already begun. Way back in the nineteenth century visionaries started dreaming of this connection between lands that used to belong together but had been torn apart by the visitations of the modern era: fanaticism, war, genocide and competing nationalisms. To be sure, the 0resund Link will have major economic impacts in both halves of the Zealand-Skane 0resund region, and the benefIcial consequences can already be detected in the shape of rising investments and falling unemployment in both the Greater Copenhagen and the Malmo-Lund areas. But to understand the true measure of the Link, one has to consider its political and even symbolic implications. The bridge is nothing less than the physical embodiment of a most welcome reversal of historical trends towards division, isolation and strife that have for too long afflicted not only Denmark and Sweden bur influenced rela tions all around the Baltic Sea and in the territories adjacent to the Barents Sea in the far north - in short the entire NEBI area."