Introduction

Since 1 January 2007 when Romania and Bulgaria joined the other 25 members of the European Union (EU), the Union has stretched to the shores of the Black Sea. This has inevitably increased interest in the wider Black Sea area, and the need to understand more about this dynamically changing part of the world. Yet relatively little has been published on the politics and international relations of the ‘region’, and its growing importance to the EU, reflected in the Union’s various eastern neighbourhood policies. Previous research has tended to focus on particular subregions around the Black Sea such as the South Caucasus or Ukraine and Moldova. There is also now much research concerning the war in Georgia that took place in August 2008. But what is the way forward in terms of EU policies for the region? In view of the overlap between EU initiatives it seemed to us that more research was needed on the interrelationship of policy in the area. The issue is a complex one, the EU having multiple formal relationships with the Black Sea region: many policies co-exist and address diverse priorities such as security, conflict resolution, economic cooperation, energy and democratization.