Research Papers

The aim of this paper is to explain the flux in EU policies towards the Black Sea region with a particular comparative focus on the impact of the EU’s two and a half operations in the South Caucasus and the EUBAM in Moldova. This paper adopts the prospect and process of EU enlargement towards the Central and Eastern Europe as a breakthrough in the EU’s deeper rapprochement with the Black Sea. By assuming that the EU has a variety of instruments at its disposal for crisis-management, this paper compares the EU’s role before and after the eastern enlargement and suggests that the EU is becoming more powerful as a structural stabilizer dealing with the problems of the region at the grass-roots level, more so than as a security actor assuming direct roles including the operative side of the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) in the resolution of the regional conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria. More specifically, this paper will argue to what extent the two and a half operations in the South Caucasus as well as the EUBAM are addressing effective solutions to region’s conflictual situations and how they rank when compared to other tools employed by the EU for conflict resolution.