The planned extension of the European Union to Sweden, Finland and Norway next year and political changes in Eastern Europe should help to revive the commercial fortunes of the Baltic Sea area, according to German trade promoters and politicians.
Delegates from the 10 countries bordering the Baltic Sea, which include the former Soviet republics of Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, met in Kiel last week to forge a new business network among the region's industries.
"Northern Europe has a good chance of becoming one of those regions that might experience an economic, cultural and social boom in the 1990s," Heide Simonis, premier of the conference host state, Schleswig-Holstein in north Germany, wrote to delegates. "Today it (the Hanseatic spirit) has thrived much more than we could dare to hope."
The Hanseatic League prospered from the 13th to 15th centuries and at its peak claimed a membership of about 100 towns, mostly German.
The League's merchants, from ports such as Luebeck and Bremen, served as middlemen between the vast hinterland of northeastern Europe and the western Europe-Mediterranean region. They pooled resources for such tasks as building lighthouses and training pilots.
The League traded with the Low Countries and England. Fittingly, the Netherlands and Britain were represented at the meeting.
The meeting, sponsored by the European Union, was also under the patronage of German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, who launched "Ostseepolitik," a new policy for the region.
Kinkel wants to push Germany into taking more responsibility for stability in the fragile former Communist regions.
"We are trying to integrate the term 'Ostseepolitik' into peoples' minds and into the language," said Axel Martens, BCCA secretary general.
BCCA comprises 32 chambers of commerce in Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Scandinavia and two German federal states, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg.
"We need common funds from the EU and an overall economic concept as it exists in the Mediterranean," he said. "So far all the efforts are scattered and bilateral. But there is this great potential of some 50 million consumers with pent-up demand for investment and consumer goods."
Martens singled out as likely growth sectors from the East electrical goods manufacturing, foundry and forge products, building materials and components, electronics, timber and textile production.
The West would export processed foods, tourism and co-operation in scientific research.
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