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Borders in East Central Europe have become much more permeable over the past ten years as formalities have been simplified and many new crossing points have opened. At the same time, cooperation in border regions has increased, thanks mainly to the EU 'Interreg' programmes, to include a range of business cultural and conservation interests. In many cases these arrangements have been formalized through Euroregions which have become an indicator of good international relations. The paper reviews these trends with reference to examples and pays particular attention to environmental projects and the joint planning initiatives being undertaken in a number of Euroregions. At a time when regional policy has been generally weak, cross-border cooperation has contributed significantly to cohesion and it is also a good indicator of stability in the region. However, the impact has been greater in the north than in the Balkans and the first round of EU eastern enlargement will have implications for cooperation across the new external borders.

FOCUSING ON THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN IDENTITY SHARED AMONG FORMER DISSIDENTS TURNED POLICYMAKERS, THIS ARTICLE ILLUSTRATES THAT REGIONAL IDENTITIES MAY PROMOTE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION. IT ARGUES THAT THEIR EFFECTIVE INFLUENCE IS CONTINGENT ON PARTICULAR DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES--PARTICULARLY THE PRESENCE OF A STRONG INSTITUTIONAL BASIS, PUBLIC AND LEGITIMACY, AND INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT.

Proponents of the environmental peacemaking approach argue that environmental cooperation has the potential to improve relations between states. This is because such cooperation facilitates common problem solving, cultivates interdependence, and helps to build trust and understanding. But as of now, very few cross-case studies on environmental peacemaking exist. Furthermore, much of the available literature understands peace in negative terms as the mere absence of acute conflict. This article addresses both shortcomings by studying the impact of international water cooperation on transitions toward more peaceful interstate relations. To do so, we combine information on positive water-related interactions between states with the peace scale, a recent data set measuring the degree of positive and negative peace between states. For the period 1956–2006, we find that a higher number of positive, water-related interactions in the previous ten years makes a shift toward more peaceful interstate relations more likely. This is particularly the case for state pairs that are not in acute conflict with each other.

The continuing development of the European Union (EU) is transforming policy and politics in its member countries, and possibly in an even larger number of potential members. This book offers a detailed investigation of the Europeanization of national environmental policy in ten western European countries since 1970. By blending state-of-the-art theories with fresh empirical material on the many manifestations of Europeanization, it sheds new light on the dynamics that are decisively reshaping national environmental policy. It also offers an original assessment of how far Europeanizatio.

The conducted analysis of the prospects of international environmental cooperation for the central regions of Ukraine showed that the most developed area of cooperation is green tourism, which is rapidly developing in the central regions. To a large extent, this is due to the natural conditions and the preserved archaism of local life that attracts tourists. On the other side, the support of green tourism by the government, improvement of the material condition of owners of green homesteads increases the interest of local communities in cooperation with international organizations. Using of international experience in the field of energy saving by local communities is being implemented by individual farms at the level of individual relationships with international organizations, but it has no massive component. Cooperation of the central regions of Ukraine with the international community is the most promising in the direction of forming a transnational ecological network. The main reserve for the formation of a regional ecological network is the lands of the water fund, degraded and unproductive agricultural landscapes. The allocation of lands for the water fund and its mapping must use plans and requires adequate financing. The threat to implementation of the regional program for the development of the ecological network and its coordination with transnational ecological corridors is the lack of financing and inconsistency of the resolution of the land ownership rights in the alienation of land to the nature reserve fund. The use of funding from international environmental funds in the central regions of Ukraine is limited due to the lack of experience in the participation of environmental NGOs in international ecological projects aimed at nature conservation, the lack of interest of local communities in land alienation in the nature reserve fund.