2021 Vol. 13 №1

The sea and inland hinterland of Baltic Europe form a unique macro-regional unit. Strong collaboration links, and competition in the Baltic Sea region, are an inherent feature of the region from the beginning of its civilization development. Since 2004, the Baltic Sea has become an internal sea of the European Union. This fact no doubt strengthened the cooperation of the countries in the region. In many spheres, these ties take the form of networking. The EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region is an important stimulus for further integrations. The objective of the article is to identify changing trends and the structural transformation in the Baltic integration process instigated by the implementation of this strategy. The document contains common goals, which strengthen cooperation and draw on the Baltic Sea potential. Three main pillars are outlined in the Strategy: marine protection, better interconnection of the region and growing prosperity. The essence of cooperation involves joint development plans on various levels: governmental, regional and local with the participation of research institutions, regional cooperation infrastructure, operational programmes, as well as the private sector. Political stabilisation and economic development may transform, in a longer time span, the emerging transnational Baltic Europe into a new economic and cultural European centre. The choice of research methodology applied in the study derives from the nature of collected data, i.e. literature regarding scientific accomplishments in the Baltic cooperation, analysis of working documents and reports drawn up by public institutions, the European Commission, and EU national and regional strategic documents.

The aim of this article is to adjust the technique of comparing the standard of living in 11 countries of Central and Eastern Europe that became members of the European Union (EU) during 2004-2013 (EU-11) and 15 countries of Western, Northern and Southern Europe – member states of the EU by 1995 (EU-15). We reveal that outright home ownership in the EU-11 countries exceeds on average 75%, while almost two-thirds of households in the EU-15 countries have a mortgage or pay rent spending on housing on average up to one quarter of their income. Despite 30 years of transition to a market economy, the EU-11 countries largely inherited such home ownership structure from the centrally planned economy institutions, i.e. individually-owned and cooperative housing, as well as subsidized state-owned housing stock that became the private property of tenants at the start of market reforms. We propose a technique of taking into account households’ income and housing costs (mortgage and rent) in one indicator given the current home ownership structure in an economy. After the purchasing power parity (PPP) adjustment, our calculations reveal that the standard of living disparities between the EU-11 and EU-15 states are less significant than when compared at nominal prices or PPP alone. Moreover, the disparity in average living standards between these two groups of countries turns out to be narrower than cross-regional differences within seven EU member states at the Eurostat’s NUTS 2 level.