Vartan Oskanian participated in a one-day conference entitled “The Black Sea Region – Current and Future Prospects” in Berlin. The conference was held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on January 25.

Mr. Oskanian is a member of the Black Sea Commission, which had sponsored the conference. The Commission, an initiative of the German Marshall Fund, the International Center for Black Sea Studies, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and TEPAV, has as its members several former high-level officials from Black Sea region member countries. The commission members have met several times over the last year in order to try to identify common interests which would serve to move the governments of Black Sea region countries towards closer cooperation.

The Commission prepared a report identifying potential areas of cooperation, as well as existing obstacles to cooperation and proposed ways to overcome them.  The conference in Berlin was the opportunity to publicly debate some of these ideas.

The discussion centered on the Black Sea region as both a region of risks and a region of potentials. In the final session, assessing the region’s future, Mr. Oskanian said there are three reasons the Black Sea region does not operate like an effective system. One is the absence of a common rallying theme around which all member states can rally; the second is that there are several conflicts, still unresolved, among member states and this makes cooperation more difficult; finally, the lack of democratic institutions throughout the region …

Future cooperation, then, depends on three main actors, Mr. Oskanian said: the EU, Russia and Turkey. Russia’s and Turkey’s roles, as the big powers in the region, are to institute a policy of cooperation on common interests. And the EU, whether as the supplier of democratic values and institutions, or as consumer of energy, is a necessary and obvious player in the region.