Title: Black Sea Synergy and Eastern Partnership: Different Centres of Gravity, Complementarity or Confusing Signals?Author: Yannis Tsantoulis
This comparative analysis is primarily based on the two Communications published by the European Commission entitled Black Sea Synergy – A New Regional Cooperation Initiative of 11 April 2007 and Eastern Partnership of 3 December 2008, and on the Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the Eastern Partnership. The basic idea is to analyse the key features of both the Black Sea Synergy and the Eastern Partnership and consider the impact of these two policy approaches for the region as a whole. Overall, the objective is to briefly assess the content of these two policy initiatives/approaches and examine their interaction and the level of their complementarity – if there is any. To this end, after a brief and focused presentation of each policy, this paper undertakes a more detailed comparative analysis (see Table 1) of the key official documents launching the Black Sea Synergy and the Eastern Partnership reflecting thus on the potential implications and the probability of a future modus vivendi.
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