The Wider Black Sea region as a political and strategic whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts and lies in the heart of legitimate geo-strategic interests of the main international and regional players. The major stakeholders of the region lack clear set of objectives and largely shared understanding of the Wider Black Sea, there is no formulated and generally shared long-term political or political-military framework for securing the stability of the region in the face of existing frozen conflicts, differing perceptions of the economic and security challenges, shortage of well-developed regional institutions, civilizational and cultural discrepancies, etc. Thus, the growing debate on the Wider Black Sea region is reasoned by the following major arguments:

-   The formula of democratic integration and collective security will help to bring peace and stability to the region.
-   The region is of enormous importance for energy supply and energy transit from the Caspian and Central Asia to European markets.
-   The region is a large market with huge economic potential, which would benefit tremendously from regional integration.

The Conference aims at enhancing the debate on the concept of the Wider Black Sea involving international and regional academic and political circles; bringing together differing evaluations and views on the Wider Black Sea to pave a way for discussing security perspectives in the light of a possible political-military strategy; as well as discussing the compatibility of Armenia’s Foreign policy and security strategy with the concept of the Wider Black Sea region and the NATO strategy as stated in Riga in 2006.

The Conference is sponsored by OSCE, NATO, YSU Alumni Association and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netheralnds.

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