Kaliningrado sritis ES plėtros požiūriu

The process of the EU enlargement to the East is inevitably linked to the derivative influence on the third countries (Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast including). In this article this viewpoint is chosen as a point of departure, which alongside with the important positive implications, leads to some specific costs. Given the prospects of Polish and the Baltic States' membership in the EU, socio-economic underdevelopment of Kaliningrad versus the neighboring countries becomes increasingly threatening. This article aims to discuss the possible repercussions of the Polish and Lithuanian membership in the European Union on the Kaliningrad region; it also aims to identify the interests, positions, instruments of the main regional players - Russia, European Union, Poland and Lithuania, and to discover whether they are effective in solving the issues Kaliningrad region faces in the context of the EU enlargement. Responding to the (future) issue of the Kaliningrad region in the context of the EU enlargement is examined as a case of crisis prevention. Thus, the author employs the definition of crisis, which is dominant in the present crisis-prevention studies: the crisis appearing during the process of "normal" decision-making is a situation caused by developments in the internal and external environment and is described by means of a threat to the important values, limited time-span to reach the decision and the understanding of the uncertainty of situation among the players. This definition is based on the subjective interpretation of the situation the decision-making players make: according to the institutional-cognitive perspective, threatening the important values, time limit and the understanding of the uncertainty of the situation - these are the necessary and sufficient conditions for the situation to be treated as a crisis. The article is subdivided to present the theoretical model of analysis, main terms and assumption; modern tendencies in the conception of crisis and crisis management; terms for successful crisis management. In the second part author compares the Kaliningrad region against the EU enlargement and gives an assessment of crisis potential that rests in these relations. The author presents requirements the EU attribute to countries seeking membership and ponders the EU enlargement as a crisis factor. In the third part we run into the positions and instruments employed by the regional players. What we find there are the alternatives for successfu