3 Seas Initiative to reach Bucharest
Romania will host during 17-18 September the Three Seas Initiative Summit (Baltic Sea – Adriatic Sea – Black Sea), a high-level meeting aiming to provide political support for better cooperation and interconnection of the economies of the states in the geographical area between the three seas, in areas such as energy, transport, telecommunications, environmental protection, defence industry etc. The initiative was launched by Croatia, together with Poland, in 2015, and a first high-level meeting took place at the UN General Assembly in 2015.
The meeting to be hosted by Bucharest is expected to be attended by heads of state from Central and Southeast Europe, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, as well as high-level guests from the United States and from the management of European and international financial institutions. The Business Forum to be organized on this occasion will be attended by over 600 guests, businessmen and officials. Also, the Three Seas Initiative is also an important platform for high-level dialogue in the context in which it brings together EU and NATO members, and the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea play a key role in NATO’s policy on discouragement of aggression from the east, while the Adriatic Sea has a particular potential, given Croatia’s EU and NATO membership. The list of speakers includes over 70 persons, of which we name President of the Republic of Poland – Andrzej Sebastian Duda, President of the Republic of Croatia – Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, Federal President of the Republic of Austria – Alexander Van der Bellen, etc.
Topics to be addressed include: The 3SI in a challenging international context; Transport interconnections in the 3SI region; Energy interconnections in the 3SI region; Digital interconnections in the 3SI region; The 3SI as catalyst towards the cohesion and convergence of the EU as a whole; The future of the 3SI and the potential for cooperation with other stakeholders outside the geographic scope of the 3SI etc.
The initiative includes 12 EU Member States located between the three seas: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and Poland. Through this project, participants want to provide economic facilities and cooperate in the defence industry. The idea of an economic bloc of countries located between the seas of the region is not a new one. The first such initiative belonged to Poland during the interwar period, proposing the creation of a confederation of states situated between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, known as Intermarium. Led by Poland, the confederation should have played the role of a real defence shield against possible aggressions on the part of Russia. However, the initiative has died from the start, because of the different positions of the states in the area.
Romania will present 6 projects
The Government of Romania adopted in August three memoranda on the list of priority projects that our country will promote at the Three Seas Initiative Summit. According to Prime Minister Viorica Dancila, the six projects to be proposed by Romania aim at cooperation with the Three Seas Initiative participating states in three strategic areas on the regional and European agenda, namely: digital, energy and transport.
Subsequently, the government published the six projects proposed by Romania, two for each area (digital, transport and energy): 1) the creation of an intelligent digital platform for real-time monitoring of waters in the river basins located in the region of the three seas, which will provide the possibility of monitoring pollution factors, as well as conducting risk analyses; 2) creating an intelligent digital platform for the trading of transport and logistics services, and Romania’s third proposal concerns the definition and development of a roadmap towards a digitized and sustainable energy sector and the creation of a digital platform for energy storage; 3) FAIRway Danube project, which has as general objective the implementation of the Rehabilitation and Maintenance Master Plan for the Danube and its Navigable Tributaries, elaborated in the framework of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region; 4) RAIL 2 SEA project – Modernization and development of Gdansk – Constanta rail route, whose main objective is the modernization of railway corridors both for commercial use and for the rapid transport of military forces and equipment on the territory of Romania, with a total length of 3,663 km; 5) development on the territory of Romania of the National Gas Transmission System on Bulgaria – Romania – Hungary – Austria corridor (BRUA, phase 1 and phase 2), further enlargement of the bidirectional gas transmission corridor (BRUA phase 3) and development on the territory of Romania of the Southern Transmission Corridor for gas from the Black Sea coast (from the Black Sea to Podisor).
