The Black Sea Region: Current and Future Prospects

The Civilitas Foundation
Monday, 01 February 2010 13:29

Vartan Oskanian participated in a one-day conference entitled `The
Black Sea Region – Current and Future Prospects’ in Berlin. The
conference was held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on January 25.

Mr. Oskanian is a member of the Black Sea Commission, which had
sponsored the conference. The Commission, an initiative of the German
Marshall Fund, the International Center for Black Sea Studies, the
Bertelsmann Foundation, and TEPAV, has as its members several former
high-level officials from Black Sea region member countries. The
commission members have met several times over the last year in order
to try to identify common interests which would serve to move the
governments of Black Sea region countries towards closer cooperation.

The Commission prepared a report identifying potential areas of
cooperation, as well as existing obstacles to cooperation and proposed
ways to overcome them. The conference in Berlin was the opportunity
to publicly debate some of these ideas.

The discussion centered on the Black Sea region as both a region of
risks and a region of potentials. In the final session, assessing the
region’s future, Mr. Oskanian said there are three reasons the Black
Sea region does not operate like an effective system. One is the
absence of a common rallying theme around which all member states can
rally; the second is that there are several conflicts, still
unresolved, among member states and this makes cooperation more
difficult; finally, the lack of democratic institutions throughout the
region …

Future cooperation, then, depends on three main actors, Mr. Oskanian
said: the EU, Russia and Turkey. Russia’s and Turkey’s roles, as the
big powers in the region, are to institute a policy of cooperation on
common interests. And the EU, whether as the supplier of democratic
values and institutions, or as consumer of energy, is a necessary and
obvious player in the region.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress