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Article: What to do about Kaliningrad? The European Union faces a Russian-controlled enclave of smugglers and industrial decay in the Baltic. (Central Europe).
- Article from:
- Europe
- Article date:
- November 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Delegation of the European Commission. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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If its current round of enlargement negotiations is successful, the European Union will soon include almost the entire Baltic Sea coast. With Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland as EU members, perhaps as early as 2004, all but a short stretch of Russia's mainland coastline and its enclave of Kaliningrad would remain outside the Union.
The presence of the latter poses the EU with several troubling difficulties. Besides being a strategic military port for the Russian Federation, Kaliningrad is also a significant source of crime and pollution, problems that EU leaders worry will spread if left unchecked. Meanwhile, Russian officials are concerned about being cut ...