Klaipėdos universitetas

The article deals with the historical circumstances and reasons which predetermined the possession of Klaipeda by Lithuania, with the idea and the practice of the Versailles system mainly taken into consideration. As argued by the author, Klaipėda’s jurisdiction to the Lithuanian Code is linked to the balance of power which predetermined the existence of national states in the Eastern and Central Europe, especially in the East Baltic region.

In this article we shall put forward a typology of the various expressions of political regionalism in Europe grounded in the assumption of the existence of two basic yet, surprisingly enough, not fully divergent forms; i.e. ethnic regionalism and transnational regionalism. In the first case, we paradoxically encounter a scaled down replica of the national State (Catalonia, Basque Country, “Padania” etc.) while in the second case, apparently with a post-ethnic connotation, just as paradoxically we are dealing with transnational yet not entirely non-ethnic projects (Black Sea Region, Tatarstan etc.).