Financiarul

The Environment Partnership is established to support the efforts of the EU and its partners of the wider Black Sea region to find cooperative approaches to the common challenges that the Black Sea region faces. The Black Sea Synergy initiative is open to all countries of the wider Black Sea region.

The Black Sea Synergy initiative was proposed by the European Commission in 2007 and subsequently endorsed by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, and supported at several occasions by the European Council. The sector partnerships are said to reflect the inclusive character of the Black Sea Synergy initiative.

They will be open to all partner countries in the wider Black Sea region that want to participate. But it will also include institutions that are active in the region, like the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organisation and the Black Sea Commission. The EU wants to give reality to this initiative by establishing sector partnerships in three crucial sectors: environment, transport and energy.

These sectors have been chosen because they are crucial to the region and improvements in these will have direct effect in the whole wider Black Sea region. Each sector partnership will be organised in a way that maximises its chances of leading to concrete projects.

‘Each sector partnership will be organised in a way that maximises its chances of leading to concrete projects. The EU cannot fund big investments directly; we don’t have adequate resources for that. But we can use our grants as seed-money, to help preparing the projects, and present them in the best possible way to those institutions that are ready to invest in infrastructure in the Black Sea region.

This formula has been successful in other contexts; it will be successful in the Black Sea as well,’ the European Commission says in a press release. Romanian Minister of the Environment and Forestry Laszlo Borbely says that this partnership is set up to be ‘a network of networks’ that will benefit the individual member states and the Black Sea region overall.

He says the new initiative will not overlap others in the region, but it will seek to advocate joint projects that will benefit the countries in the area.
‘The launch of this partnership is a success story. We have been mandated by the Commission, which entrusted the environment area to Romania, which should become a regional leader in this field, and that is why we have deployed efforts to have a final declaration completed.

The hardships are only now beginning, because we will have to have a memorandum, a committee and a secretariat, besides having projects. Because the participant countries are very different, it is hard to discuss how to harmonise all interests. I hope that everyone involved will understand that under this partnership there are no class one or class two people, but we are all equal and we will develop joint projects, for which Romania has even voiced readiness to contribute funds,’ says Borbely.

A committee and a secretariat for the new partnership are to be created within the next three months, so that toward the middle of the year concrete projects may be considered.
Contributing toward the financing of the projects under the new partnership will be the participating countries, as well as financial institutions including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organisation (BSEC) and the Commission on the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution.