ABSTRACT
Romania’s regional cooperation attempts have not been very fruitful through over the last 20 years. It failed to accede to the Visegrad Visegrád group in 1991. It tried to present itself as a stability factor in the Balkans during the former Yugoslav wars, but did not obtain the mediator role for which it hoped. Finally, in the 2000s, it attempted to become a Black Sea regional leader, by playing the card of its EU membership as an asset in promoting European values eastward. None of these attempts was very successful, and, if Black Sea cooperation was one of its top three priorities during 2005–2007 (along with the so-called “Bucharest-London-Washington Axis” and the special relationship with the Republic of Moldova; see Ivan 2009), Romania has greatly downplayed its Black Sea discourse in the last few years.
