Council of the Baltic Sea States

The Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) was established in March 1992 in Copenhagen at the initiative of the German and Danish foreign ministers, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, in response to the geopolitical reshaping of the region after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It was created to encourage cooperation among the newly independent Baltic states, the Nordic countries, Germany, Poland, and Russia, alongside the European Commission.

Original members were Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Russia, with the European Commission as a participant. Iceland joined in 1995. Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the CBSS suspended Russia's membership on 3 March 2022, and Russia announced its withdrawal on 17 May 2022. Belarus had observer status that was suspended in 2022 as well.

The CBSS operates through annual ministerial sessions and a rotating one-year presidency among member states. Its Secretariat, established in 1998, is based in Stockholm. Work is organized around three long-term priorities adopted in the 2014 Vilnius Declaration and reaffirmed in subsequent reform documents: Regional Identity, Sustainable & Prosperous Region, and Safe & Secure Region. Concrete activities include the Baltic Sea Labour Network, the Task Force against Trafficking in Human Beings, the Expert Group on Children at Risk, and civil protection coordination.

The CBSS is not a treaty-based organization and has no binding legal authority; it functions as a soft-law coordination platform whose outputs are political declarations, joint projects, and funded initiatives such as the Project Support Facility. It complements, rather than duplicates, the work of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR), HELCOM (marine environment), and the Nordic Council. Its post-2022 agenda has increasingly emphasized resilience, hybrid threats, and support for Ukraine.