Estonian Membership in the EU

This booklet is the first concrete result of the cooperation established in 2002 between the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo and the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute in Tallinn. It thus symbolises the comprehensive growing-together that increasingly characterises the east-west situation also in Northern Europe, generally as well as in the field of foreign policy research more specifically.

The Estonian EU membership case gives a good illustration of crucial and controversial problems linked to the process of asymmetrical change in Europe at large, in particular as regards security and foreign policy rearrangements. The analysis focuses on how the different security interests of the countries involved are likely to be affected by the Baltic enlargement of the EU in the perspective of further European integration. Will Baltic security through expanding EU integration take place at the cost of a NATO or US guarantee? In their relations with Russia, the Baltic countries seem obliged to follow the adopted EU strategy of increasing cooperation. Such a strategy of 'soft security' in accordance with the EU Nordic Dimension also seems to offer the best possibilities for closer Nordic-Baltic cooperation in this area.