Both regions have more in common and more to learn from each other than meets the eye.
The states of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) have recently been deepening their regional coordination, as well as expanding their efforts to deal with outside powers jointly, a format known as C5 plus, indicating the five Central Asian states and a foreign counterpart.
Only in the last month, Central Asian leaders met with Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, to expand ties, before congregating some weeks later for a summit with China’s leader, Xi Jinping. Now, Central Asian diplomats are advancing a similar dialogue platform with the five Nordic countries, which would make it, fittingly, a C5+5 format. There is more promise in such a format of cooperation than meets the eye.
Central Asia’s New Era of Cooperation
For much of the first quarter-century of independence, the Central Asian states turned inward, safeguarding their sovereignties and identities, sometimes defining themselves in opposition to one another. This was a typical post-colonial journey, marked by efforts to consolidate statehood. Efforts to develop regional cooperation were made, but ultimately failed to bear fruit.
A remarkable shift has occurred in recent years, transforming the region’s approach toward cooperation and development. The leaders of all Central Asian states now meet for annual summits to coordinate policies on regional issues, such as trade, transport, energy, water, ecology, and security.
The revived spirit of cooperation has already produced tangible results. Intra-regional trade increased by $11 billion between 2019 and 2024, with room for further growth. Shifts in international transportation routes and supply chains, partly as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, have led to an increased regional focus on issues related to the transit of goods and raw materials along the so-called Middle Corridor.
The long-unresolved border disputes between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan have now been handled between the states without external involvement. The states are cooperating to address the equally delicate matter of water resource management that considers the needs of both upstream and downstream countries in the region.
Enhanced regional cohesiveness is also enabling the Central Asian states to engage with the world not only as individual nations, but as a united region. The so-called “Central Asia plus” (C5+1) platforms have now been established between the five Central Asian states and no fewer than ten external partners, including both individual countries and organizations. The joint Central Asian approach to key global partners has enhanced the region’s international visibility and agency. Central Asia is increasingly becoming a region that foreign powers engage with without sowing intra-regional divisions, as often happened in the past.
The EU’s increasingly proactive position toward Central Asia testifies to the region’s growing strategic importance in a rapidly changing world. The first-ever summit between leaders of the EU and the five countries of Central Asia in April 2025 upgraded EU-Central Asia relations to the level of a strategic partnership. For Germany and Italy, interaction through the EU does not suffice, as they pursue their own complementary engagement with Central Asia through individual C5+1 formats.
While Central Asia has formalized relations with the EU and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), it seeks to expand region-to-region contacts further. Notably, the Nordic region is emerging at the forefront of this effort.
Central Asia and the Nordic Countries
How is the Nordic experience of regional cooperation relevant to the distant Central Asia? On the surface, there appear to be few common links between the Nordic region and the Central Asian region. The Nordic countries are renowned for their stable democracies, robust welfare states, and economic prosperity, whereas the Central Asian states, having gained independence only three decades ago, continue to contend with problems associated with authoritarian governance and economic dependence on commodities.
The Nordic population stands at 28 million, equivalent to 0.35 percent of the total global population, and the combined economies of the five Nordic states amount to 1.8 percent of the world economy. The 83 million inhabitants of the five Central Asian countries represent 1 percent of the world population, but their share of the global economy is no more than 0.3 percent.
Yet, the two regions have more in common than they may seem at first glance, and closer and systematized relations between Central Asia and the Nordic region would hold promise for both sides.
Like Central Asia, the Nordic countries share close historical, cultural, religious, and legal ties. Scandinavian languages, like Turkic languages in Central Asia, are closely related, while Finnish, like Tajik, belongs to a different linguistic family.
Despite their closeness, the Nordic countries for long displayed considerable differences in their membership in continental organizations. Until Finland and Sweden became members of NATO in 2023 and 2024, respectively, Denmark was the only Nordic country to hold membership in both the EU and NATO. Norway and Iceland are members of NATO but not the EU.
This is similar to the variation among Central Asian states in relation to Eurasian cooperation organizations, such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Economic Union. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are part of both, while Tajikistan is only a member of the CSTO. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan stand outside both organizations. Thus, the divergent patterns of membership of the Nordic countries in continental cooperation organizations did not hinder them from engaging in long and fruitful regional cooperation.
Central Asian states are seeking Nordic expertise in renewable energy, sustainable development, and technological innovation to address the combined challenges of climate change and the green transition. In addition, the effort at domestic reform in the leading Central Asian states would benefit from Nordic expertise. In turn, the Nordic region stands to benefit from access to emerging markets and valuable resources in a rapidly developing region at the crossroads of East and West.
Moreover, there is a clearly expressed European interest in engaging with Central Asia to promote resilience, prosperity, and regional cooperation. Regarding the final objective, the Nordic region could offer unique added value by promoting region-to-region exchange and sharing experiences on regional cooperation. The most natural way to achieve this would be to establish a “C5+5” Nordic-Central Asian format for dialogue and cooperation.
Nordic Lessons for Central Asia
Although the Central Asian states are coordinating policies through a rapidly expanding array of arrangements, encompassing more areas than ever, the region still stands out due to the lack of a strong, functioning regional institution. Eventually, the next phase of regional consolidation in Central Asia will require the establishment of a regional organization of Central Asian states. What lessons from Nordic cooperation can help achieve this objective?
Nordic cooperation is primarily embedded in two institutions—the inter-parliamentary Nordic Council and the inter-governmental Nordic Council of Ministers. The Nordic Council was created in 1952 and consists of national parliamentary delegations from each country. It convenes twice a year for a general meeting in the fall and for a specific thematic session in the spring. The Nordic Council of Ministers was founded in 1971 to govern the cooperation between the member countries’ governments. Its work is divided into eleven different councils, one general council and ten responsible for specific policy areas.
The Helsinki Treaty, signed in 1962, is the foundational legal framework for Nordic cooperation. It institutionalized the role of the Nordic Council and later, through an amendment, the Nordic Council of Ministers. Nordic cooperation represents an interstate cooperation rather than supranational integration, a voluntary collaboration between sovereign states. Decisions are made by consensus and are not legally binding. Each country maintains full sovereignty over its laws and policies.
In contrast to the parliamentary political systems of the Nordic countries, all Central Asian states share a presidential model of government. Given the vast powers concentrated in the presidential office and the personalistic political culture in Central Asia, any effective institutionalization must acknowledge this reality. A Central Asian Council of Presidents is therefore preferable over the Nordic type of parliamentary or ministerial council.
Mindful of their sovereignty and independence, the Central Asian states are unwilling to delegate national powers to supranational institutions. This necessitates an intergovernmental organizational structure that safeguards sovereignty while enabling increased cooperation. The light type of integration characterizing Nordic cooperation, based on consensus and respect for sovereignty, could fit in the Central Asian context.
The concept of “Nordic added value” has become a guiding principle for Nordic cooperation. It means that the Nordic countries cooperate in matters where cooperation between them adds greater value than if they were to act independently. The Nordic concept serves as a way of legitimizing joint Nordic efforts and ensuring that collaborative efforts are seen as beneficial and needed by all participating countries. It is not far-fetched to envision an analogous unifying ideal of “added Central Asian value” to identify areas where cooperation adds value for the countries.
After the establishment of the Nordic Council, the states took several groundbreaking decisions to strengthen regional integration, including the Common Nordic Labour Market (1954) and the Nordic Passport Union (1958). As a result, Nordic citizens could live and work freely across all Nordic Council member states, and passport controls at the borders were abolished.
This holds a couple of interesting implications for Central Asia. Firstly, mobility and labor market needs were thus crucial shared interests, laying the groundwork for Nordic cooperation. Corresponding unifying sector-specific platforms in Central Asia could be energy and water. In those areas, “joint projects and interests already create natural incentives for deeper integration.” In turn, this could spill over to more and more policy areas.
Secondly, the Nordic labor market mobility has contributed to fostering a sense of Nordic identity and encouraged cross-border interaction. In Central Asia, regional identity is still hindered by restricted movements; however, since 2023, all citizens of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have been able to visit each other using only their national ID cards. Uzbekistan is in the process of negotiating a similar arrangement with both Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Japarov has also floated the idea of a Silk Road Visa, a unified visa system for Central Asia similar to the Schengen visa in Europe, which allows for free movement across the region.
Notwithstanding the role of formal institutions in giving Nordic cooperation a certain political steering, much Nordic exchange takes place informally or bottom-up through local networks and various forms of spontaneous interaction across the region. Research collaboration and return and readmission in the migration sphere are but two such examples. Overall, greater cross-country interaction and human-to-human contact on a grassroots level will be as important as official political meetings in fostering a growing sense of Central Asian identity.
Why Closer Nordic-Central Asia Ties Matter
Ties between the Nordic countries and Central Asia are still in their infancy, in part due to geographic distance, but also because outdated views of Central Asia as a “stagnant” or “backward” region prevail in northern Europe. Given the dynamism of Central Asia in recent years, the Nordic states are falling behind other Europeans that are rapidly expanding ties with Central Asia. This is ironic, as Nordic states have added reasons to strengthen their relations with Central Asian states: they can learn a great deal from Central Asians about navigating relations with Russia and China.
Indeed, the Nordic region is greatly concerned about neighboring Russia, while its relatively small and trade-dependent economies expose it to China’s economic power. This makes Central Asia a fruitful dialogue partner, given the intense experiences Central Asian states have of interactions with Moscow and Beijing.
Policymakers in the Nordic states may have more acute concerns at present, whether relating to Russian aggression, the faltering Transatlantic link, or unrest in the Middle East. Still, it would make a lot of sense for them to reciprocate the Central Asian outreach and work to formalize a dialogue format with the region.
About the Authors: Johan Engvall and Svante Cornell
Johan Engvall, PhD, is acting head of research and analysis of the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, based at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.
Svante E. Cornell, PhD, is Director of the American Foreign Policy Council’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, and a co-founder of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm.
Image: Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com.
