Xenophon Paper 2 pdf - ICBSS

has furthermore been a keen supporter of updating the BSEC agenda in order to keep
the organisation relevant in an ever changing world. In that regard, the BSEC’s decisions
to add a security dimension (in the soft sense) to its portfolio was a necessary and
welcome step. Thus, the BSEC could address a wide array of interests and concerns,
pertinent to the problems of the Black Sea (organised crime, environmental hazards,
etc.) as well as be relevant to the enhancement of its assets (trade, development, major
bridge for transiting goods and energy resources between Asia and Europe).
Bulgaria’s attitude and policies within the BSEC, though part of the broader Black Sea
policy of Bulgaria in recent years, has been dominated by other policy concerns such
as achieving membership in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European
Union, energy security issues, etc.
Bulgaria’s regional policies
Bulgaria has two priorities in its regional foreign policy. The first priority is the Balkans,
where Bulgaria maintains a traditional interest. Developments in the western part of the
peninsula throughout the 1990s have been of special concern to Bulgaria because of
the fear of a potential spill-over. Additionally, the Western Balkans exemplifies the vital
geographic link between Bulgaria and important trade and political partners in Western
Europe.
The Black Sea region represents Bulgaria’s second most important regional priority.
The region has not until recently been an area of particularly active involvement which
applies as much to Bulgaria as to other western countries. The reasons for Bulgaria’s
own relative lack of attention stemmed from the country’s primary preoccupation with
domestic reform and the two critical foreign policy goals of joining the European Union
and the NATO. In geopolitical terms, throughout the 1990s, the country lied in the ‘grey
zone’ of insecurity of Central and Eastern Europe. The EU and the United States (US)
were then deeply engaged with the post-Yugoslav break up, and the eastern shores of
the Black Sea seemed at the time distant. Despite the fact that the country was a member
of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation since its establishment in 1992, there was only
an occasional interest to potential energy infrastructure projects such as the AMBO 3 and
the Bourgas - Alexandroupolis oil pipelines or the Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-
Asia (TRACECA) infrastructure initiative. Though conceived as early as the mid-1990s,
these initiatives never materialised as they lacked not only financial support but, more
importantly, they were never set within a broader policy strategy. In fact, projects of
such scale in an unstable region require a political rationale before any funding could
be expected.
3 Albania-Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)-Bulgaria Oil-pipeline.
38 UNFOLDING THE BLACK SEA ECONOMIC COOPERATION VIEWS FROM THE REGION