Xenophon Paper 2 pdf - ICBSS

THE POLICY OF ROMANIA TOWARDS
THE BSEC AND THE BLACK SEA REGION
Nicolae Micu
“It may be that the cause of the Black Sea itself, of its
waters and its creatures, is at last beginning to achieve
what so many millennia of human activity have failed to
achieve: the union of the peoples who live around it”. 1
The Romanian position on the Black Sea and the BSEC
The traditional Romanian policy towards the Black Sea and the surrounding region was
synthetically spelled out by former Foreign Minister and President of the League of
Nations Nicolae Titulescu, who used to emphasise that everything that has any connection
with the Black Sea concerns Romania to the highest degree, since the Black Sea and
its straits are its only exit to the open sea. He also used to stress, speaking of his country’s
main interests abroad, that any serious foreign policy must be based first of all on
building good relations with neighbouring states. Those two parameters have guided
the international behaviour of the country ever since the proclamation of its national
independence in 1877.
It is against this background that Romania has welcomed the Turkish initiative to launch
the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) and has actively participated in all stages
of its establishment and subsequent development. In fact, the very first session of the
Working Group entrusted with the task of elaborating the BSEC’s purposes, principles and
priority fields of activity was held in Bucharest at the beginning of 1991. Symbolically, the
session took place in the Titulescu’s House as a reminder that between the two World Wars
he was a champion of dynamic institutions of subregional cooperation in Central and
Southeastern Europe.
The particular interest of Romania in the concept of committing all countries of the Black
Sea region to a process of multilateral cooperation was motivated by several wellfounded
reasons.
First, the initiative to develop such cooperation was undertaken by Turkey in the aftermath
of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) Summit held in 1990,
which, in the Paris Charter for a New Europe, set out the principles and purposes of
1 Ascherson, Neal (1995), Black Sea, Jonathan Cape, London, p. 270.
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