The Black Sea and the basin itself have for millennia been a transit route and provided connectivity – also for military campaign or for migration – among Eastern- and Southeast Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Middle East, both on land and on sea. The challenge usually being the conflicting interests, wars, and the eventual expansion of great powers, Tsarist Russia, from the North to the South, Ottoman Turkey (or before Persia) and the British Empire from the West to the East, just to mention the greatest ones. Yet, it has mostly remained peripheral to mainstream European history, a field of regional power competition (Tsarist Russia and Ottoman Turkey), and even to global power interests (Great Britain). Though during the Cold War, the Black Sea constituted the border between the two worlds, it was the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union and to the NATO which seemed to offer a renewed importance to the region.
The consequently elaborated EU’s strategy, the Black Sea Synergy reflects the EU’s traditional regional approach to its closer and wider neighbourhood. Regionalism has been a distinctive feature of EU thinking and terminology since the beginning of the EU, causing several opportunities and at least as many challenges. The Black Sea region on the one hand includes/brings together countries with different statuses in their relationship with the EU (member states, candidate state, ENP partners, strategic partner), on the other hand, it is closely connected (without any real geographical, historical, and cultural border) and is open to several other regions of Europe, Asia, and even Africa.
Nevertheless, besides this regional understanding, there has been a different, linear kind of approach. First, in the Russian strategy, historically, the Back Sea had the strategic importance of connecting Russia to the Mediterranean – with the annexation of Crimea, and growing activity around the region, this traditional element clearly re-emerged. The US perspective, the Black Sea as a kind of blockage to the spread of the Soviet/Russian influence, seems to reflect this linear approach, too. However, by forming an alliance in the region against Russian interests, and making the region ”the doorstep of NATO”, the interest of the US in regional block-forming is also manifest.
The large-scale connectivity programs launched by China (the BRI) and more recently, by India (NSTC) have definitely come to reflect a challenge to the regional approach of both the EU and the US. But while the EU, despite its security concerns, has still strong economic interests in the enhanced connectivity through the region, for the US, to stop/deter not only Russian, but also Chinese intrusion into the region remains a top priority.
Among the regional actors, Turkey is in a specific position. Itself in the cross-section of several smaller and greater regions, connectivity belongs to its main assets. Still, the dilemma to handle the regional and the linear approach of connectivity still exists. With the Black Sea Economic Connectivity (BSEC), Turkey initiated a regional cooperation in 1992 that tries to promote economic cooperation, infrastructural connections, and cultural exchange among its member states. Its efforts to mediate between Ukraine and Russia in the recent conflict reflects well its interests. The question about whom to connect still exists, however.
The current Hungarian foreign policy was first based on the “eastern opening” policy launched in 2012. It emphasizes, but also “naturalizes” the importance of maintaining global (eastern) connectivity – energy ties to Russia, and to Central Asia, trade and investment connections to China and the Far East – all among the high priority interest of Hungarian foreign policy, even if they challenge the EU and US approaches. While in the early 2010s, the developing of synergies between the Danube Region Strategy and the Black Sea region (in alignment with the EU regional approach), and the Three Seas Initiative were among the priorities of the Hungarian foreign policy, its current low-profile activity in both the EU BS Synergy and the BSEC contradict these intentions.
The text was originally published at:
Connectivity, the Black Sea Region, and Hungarian Priorities
In: Pădureanu, Mihaela-Adriana; Oneaşă, Iulian (Eds.) From synergy to strategy in the black sea region. Assessing opportunities and challenges
Bucharest, Romania : European Institute of Romania (2024) 104 p. pp. 64-65.
