Towards a Baltic Sea Region Strategy in Critical ... - Helsinki.fi

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION IN THE BALTIC SEA REGION
cooperate. This potential barrier to cooperation has been avoided thanks to good
and personal contacts with the Russian authorities. Furthermore, it has been
especially important that those Russian authorities present at maritime safety
cooperation meetings have recently had a full mandate to make decisions. This
implies that Russia too has a sincere will to promote safety in the Gulf of Finland.
Without this mutual trust and adequate openness, based on common professional
background of the people involved, questions that have been negotiated would
have easily turned political. This would have meant unnecessary obstacles in
putting forward important traffic safety measures.
The political nature of practically all cooperation questions with Russia has
thus been avoided to that extent that in a politically sensitive neighbourhood 110 , as
the region is described in many EU neighbourhood programmes, concrete steps
forward have been made possible. It is no surprise that all the parties to the
GOFREP cooperation see the present system as globally unique. Barriers of a
historical, political and national nature have been overcome by a professional
attitude to the questions at hand.
All in all, the Gulf of Finland countries should promote the region as a pilot
area within the European Union and worldwide in the field of cross-border risks
prevention in maritime transport. This would provide the citizens of the EU in
general and particularly the people living by the Gulf of Finland comprehensive
safety across their borders and enhance the mutual trust that is needed in
developing the safety systems and procedures even further – eventually, towards a
traffic control system with high-tech navigation surveillance qualities and traffic
command powers delegated to traffic control operators.
110 See the presentation by Chaplinskaya in June 2007 (ISBMSC 2007).
164 NORDREGIO REPORT 2007:5