Whose partnership? Regional participatory arrangements in CBC programming on the Finnish-Russian border

Cross-border cooperation (CBC) serves as a tool to combat peripherality of border regions and integrate formerly disconnected borderlands. Resting on the principles of partnership and multi-level governance, CBC activities are deemed by the European Union (EU) to include local/regional authorities, economic and social partners at various stages of the cooperation process. Even at the EU's external borders, where EU regional development principles of CBC are endorsed in an often uneasy combination with external policy principles, joint cross-border administrative arrangements and regional programme designs have been introduced through successive administrative reforms. Analysing the preparations for the European Neighbourhood Instrument Karelia CBC (2014-2020), it is argued that in order to promote regional development goals the priorities of CBC programmes should be in line with the aims of local/regional stakeholders, which requires resilient consultation and participatory processes throughout the programming cycle. Participant observation of the Finnish-Russian Karelia CBC programme preparations helped the authors pinpoint achievements and weaknesses of current joint programming solutions and investigate ways in which the partnership principle is put into practice in the preparatory processes. In the current political climate, it is interesting to note that CBC was not included by the EU or Russia in sanctions/countersanctions that were the result of the crisis in Ukraine.