The European Union's Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR): improving multilevel governance in Baltic Sea cooperation?

Macro-regional strategies - such as the ones for the Baltic Sea, the Danube, the Ionian-Adriatic, and the Alpine regions - constitute new elements of European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy and territorial cooperation. In a nutshell, these strategies aim at building functional and transnational 'macro-regions' involving the EU, its member states, as well as partner countries within the EU's system of multilevel governance (MLG). As the oldest macro-regional strategy, the EU Strategy of the Baltic Sea Region has been in operation since 2009. Drawing on the theory of MLG, this contribution assesses the effects on the political mobilization and interplay between international, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental actors in the region.