Background Paper on the Ways and Means of Enhancing the BSEC Contribution to Strengthening Security and Stability in the Region *.

Since its inception, in 1992, the Black Sea Economic Cooperation has developed comprehensive and functional legal and institutional structures, which have enabled it to take up an increasing number of tasks for promoting regional cooperation in a variety of spheres and forging a distinct identity of its own in the emerging complex of a new European architecture. Building security and stability in the region, while ever present in the thinking and action of the Member States, was not originally a primary object of BSEC work but was rather seen as an outgrowth of its core business in the economic domain, hopefully resulting in increased mutual understanding and confidence among the nations of the region. The BSEC Decennial Summit Declaration (Istanbul, 25 June 2002) in its paragraph 4 marked a conceptual watershed by putting the security and stability concerns firmly on the Organization’s agenda and charging the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs (CMFA) to develop policy proposals to that effect. On the strength of that political mandate, the Seventh Meeting of the CMFA (Tirana, 25 October 2002) agreed to assign to the International Center for Black Sea Studies (ICBSS), as the acknowledged BSEC think‐tank, the task of organizing the meetings of an ad hoc Study Group bringing together experts from Member States and partner international organizations for the purpose of producing a Working Paper on the ways and means of enhancing the BSEC contribution to strengthening security and stability in the region. The ad hoc Study Group held four brainstorming sessions in Athens (26–27 March 2003, 10–11 July 2003, 26–27 February 2004 and 21–22 June 2004). This draft Working Paper was elaborated on the basis of individual written contributions from participants and collective debates at the ad hoc Study Group sessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]