This article is dedicated to the development of European unity in Central Europe and Scandinavia as a mechanism of collective security and intergovernmental cooperation development. The cultural and historical features of Central Europe and Scandinavia emphasise the need for a comparative study into the European idea. This article considers the tendencies and factors, which affected the development of European idea in the framework of post-war planning. This research sets out to compare and identify similar or analogous features and elements of the theoretical bases of movements for European unity in Central and Northern Europe. The author comes to conclusions about the correlation between the «Europe of regions» model and the European unity concept. The ideas of Scandinavian and Central European integration rested on national and cultural and historical connections of the neighbouring countries expected to constitute such formations, which contradicted and was opposed to the theoretical framework of Western European integration. On the other hand, regional integration implied that a federation or union of neighbouring states could be considered a step towards a more universal organisation, which would not mean the isolation of Scandinavia and Central Europe from the rest of the world. The theoretical and practical significance of this work consists in the comparative approach to the analysis of phenomena, which have been considered individually in the framework of historiography. It is the major contribution of the article to research on history of ideas and European diplomacy. Moreover, the subject of research is immediately connected to the problem of security in the Baltic region and the Soviet factor, as well as political stereotypes produced in this field. The author employed the historical comparative and inductive types of the historical typological method.