As is has been shown over some past years, the Northern Dimension initiated and inspired by Finland, proved to be an efficient policy tool of the European Union allowing to meet the interests of Russia and EU member-states.

In this connection best practices of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP) may be of interest and practical use. This structure is well-designed to coherently combine approaches of totally different actors: the Russian Federation, the donors (first of all, EU member-states concerned), as well as international finance institutions (IFIs). The concept of the NDEP initiative had been developed in 2001 as a response to requests from the Russian Federation and the international community to co-ordinate efforts with a view to solving environmental problems of the Russia’s North-West, and it has been successfully implemented as an innovative cooperation framework over the last few years. One of its major strengths is that contributions transferred by donors to the account of the NDEP’s Foundation make it possible to multiply the volume of resources of international finance institutions allocated for environmental projects. Construction of water-treatment facilities in Saint-Petersburg completed in September of 2005 had clearly testified the positive impact of the environmental partnership.
As it is well-known, the Kaliningrad Oblast has also been determined as one of main priorities for the Northern Dimension along with environment protection cooperation.
In spite of the fact that the Kaliningrad Oblast has recently demonstrated one of the highest economic growth rates among the regions of the Russian Federation, some issues related to sustainable development in the long run are still in place. The current positive dynamics is mainly based on increased outputs at large-scale assembling plants, specializing on import-substituting productions and taking advantage of customs preferences, provided for by the regime of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) existing in the region since 1996. At the same time, the share of small businesses – forming a basis for prosperity and stability in all developed countries of the world – is quite modest here compared to not only the average European level, but even to the level existing in the North-West of Russia. For instance, there are 19 and 9 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) per 1,000 inhabitants in Saint-Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast respectively, whereas in Kaliningrad – just 5.
It should be noted that efforts to support the Kaliningrad Oblast’s development remain to be quite dispersed though: funds are channeled separately by Russia’s federal authorities, the European Union (within the so-called technical assistance) and its specific member-states (on a bilateral basis). So, it is obvious that an enhanced co-ordination and coherence with respect to allocation of resources would allow to not just increase efficiency of spending, but also to attract IFIs concerned to implementation of specific projects. We believe that such co-operation could produce a significant synergetic effect to the benefit of both Kaliningrad itself, and Russia and the European Union as strategic partners.
Thus, the following conclusions might be drawn from the above:
·        The issues of life-support and development of the Kaliningrad Oblast may be solved in the most effective and efficient way provided that Russia and European Union elaborate and apply a more coherent approach.
·        When developing a programme of partnership on Kaliningrad it is necessary to consider the best practices already accumulated, including forms and mechanisms of cooperation developed and applied in the framework of the Northern Dimension initiative, in particular the lessons learnt from the Environmental Partnership.
·        It seems appropriate and expedient to incorporate the mentioned proposals into a new version of the Northern Dimension initiative, currently being planned in connection with the forthcoming Finnish EU presidency in July 2006.