site.btaBulgaria's Priorities for BSEC Chairmanship-in-Office Announced

Four main priorities were determined for Bulgaria's Chairmanship-in-Office of the Organisation of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC). This was announced at a Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Policy meeting on Thursday. The Chairmanship has a six-month term, which starts in July this year and will end in December. 

BSEC is a multilateral political and economic initiative between Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Turkiye, and Ukraine.

The first priority of the Bulgarian chairmanship is environmental protection and sustainable governing of water resources. The goal is to tackle sea pollution and biodiversity loss, said Yordan Parvanov, Foreign Ministry Director General for European Affairs.

The other three priorities are:

• Cultural and educational exchange and tourism in the Black Sea region;
• Regional development and crisis management;
• Cooperation with the EU and other regional organisations.

According to Parvanov, a fundamental issue for the proper functioning of BSEC are the ongoing Russian military actions in Ukraine. Recently, they have almost completely stopped the work of BSEC, he added.

"We propose to start projects and for the organisation to demonstrate real activity because everything is halted on a political level," said Foreign Ministry Director for Southeast Europe Momchil Raychevski. Cooperation between BSEC and the EU has proven effective through the years but is not active at the moment due to the aforementioned reasons, Raychevski noted.