Baltic Sea offers chance for regional cooperation within EU

Sep 17, 2009, 14:52 GMT

Stockholm - A Swedish coast guard vessel was Thursday one of the venues visiting European Union ministers were to inspect as part of their discussions on a joint strategy for the Baltic Sea region.

'The EU Baltic Sea Strategy is a pilot project for a new cooperation model in the EU,' Sweden's EU affairs minister Cecilia Malmstrom said.

As the current holder of the rotating EU presidency, Sweden hopes that leaders of the 27-nation bloc later this year will formally adopt the strategy.

The scheme covers areas ranging from maritime surveillance, crime prevention and combating human trafficking to protecting the marine environment. Other components include increasing regional competitiveness as well as networking and research cooperation.

The coast guard vessel moored below the royal palace in Stockholm has been used to inspect fishing boats, monitor vessels at sea and has been used for cleanup operations after oil spills, Thomas Fago, head of the Swedish coast guard's search and rescue operations told reporters.

'Each day some 2,000 larger vessels ply the Baltic Sea's waters, and roughly the same number of smaller vessels' Fago said, noting that these included between 300 and 500 oil tankers reflecting increased oil exports from Russia.

Each year, coast guard units from the states that border the Baltic Sea conduct joint exercises to improve their preparedness.

The visiting ministers for EU affairs and other officials were also to be shown a research vessel deployed by the Swedish Environmental Research Institute that takes samples from the seabed along the Swedish coast and out at sea.

Analaysis of the samples gives researchers insights into the effects of eutrophication caused by nutrients including nitrogen and phosphorus - often due to runoff from agriculture.

The Baltic Sea is shared by nine states of which eight are EU members - Denmark, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Sweden. Russia is also a border state.

The Baltic Sea waters are brackish, partly due to the limited inflow of seawater via the Danish straits and sound areas that link the Baltic to the North Sea.

The Federation of Swedish Farmers was also to showcase a project where Swedish farmers have been encouraged to reduce the use of fertilizer to reduce the risk of eutrophication.

'It is very cost efficient and the individual farmer can experience benefits in the form of lower costs for fertilizer,' Carl Wachtmeister of the farmers' federation said.