The Black Sea Economic Cooperation: Will Hopes Become Reality?

Abstract

As the cradle of different civilizations, located at the trade and geopolitical cross-roads between Europe and Asia, the Black Sea subregion has been, since ancient times, a place where people of different nationalities, traditions, cultures and religions lived together and intermingled. Historically, the Black Sea basin has been known for efforts to build bridges, establish rapprochement among neighbouring — and often conflicting — nations, and develop mutually beneficial trade relations and contacts. The famous Silk Road, for centuries, linked the countries of Europe and Asia. Consequently, extensive and useful experience of trade exchange, cohabitation and mutual enrichment between different cultures and beneficial contacts among neighbouring peoples have been established and nurtured. This process, however, has never been an easy and simple one: periods of intensive trade relations, peace and tranquillity were followed by mutual misperceptions and tensions, protracted conflicts and destructive wars. In particular, for many decades after the Second World War, the atmosphere and political climate in the Black Sea subregion were characterized by mutual suspicions and mistrust between the countries belonging to the two opposing political and military blocs divided by the Iron Curtain. With the end of the Cold War in the last decade of the twentieth century, the countries of the subregion have at last won a new chance to revive the cooperative spirit of the area.

The author would like to thank the BSEC Permanent Secretariat for assistance in obtaining BSEC materials and documents and Mr. Andrii Kononenko, Acting Director of the Department for International Economic Cooperation of the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine for his advice and assistance.