The EU’s New Black Sea Security Strategy: Right Goals, Unclear Means
Introduction
The Black Sea region has always been a strategic battlefield of ideologies and influence, not least during the Cold War. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it experienced a period of relative tranquility as the geopolitical focus shifted toward other hotspots such as the Middle East and the South China Sea. In more recent times—notably after the 2008 Russia-Georgia war and Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea and its war in eastern Ukraine—the region and its importance for the security architecture of Europe slowly re-emerged on the agenda of policymakers in the EU and the United States. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 then pushed it to the forefront of transatlantic security concerns.
Today there is a clear consensus among the EU, NATO, and the United States that they need a fundamental rethink toward a strong, long-term strategy for the Black Sea. Having expressed its willingness to become more of a geopolitical actor, the EU has now reiterated its commitment to the region by adopting a strategy on Black Sea security, which was published on May 28.
The strategy identifies five countries as key players in the region and calls for closer cooperation with them: member states Bulgaria and Romania, candidate countries Moldova and Ukraine, and Türkiye, a NATO member with a substantial military presence and strategic influence in the region.
Unfortunately, however, the EU’s new strategy does not contain a concrete action plan, a clear implementation timeline, or, most importantly, a dedicated budget. Without these, the EU’s ability to translate its political intentions into concrete outcomes for the security of the Black Sea states will remain significantly limited. If its strategic approach remains largely declarative, this increases the risk of ceding influence to Russia in the immediate region and beyond it. A more concrete, robust, and coordinated EU security presence there is still urgently needed.
Key Security Challenges
Military Threats: Russia’s war against Ukraine has turned the Black Sea into a security hotspot. Crimea has become a heavily armed Russian fortress and a base of operations for air and maritime strikes, which creates a direct risk for the states in the region beyond just Ukraine. Russia has also imposed a de facto naval blockade on Ukraine and made large parts of the Black Sea unsafe for navigation, severely disrupting commercial shipping and Ukrainian grain exports. Russia’s tactics such as the widespread use of sea mines and, in one instance, boarding a civilian ship are crippling commercial shipping and destabilizing the region’s economy. As a response, NATO has substantially reinforced its presence in the Black Sea by deploying battlegroups to Bulgaria and Romania, ramping up military drills, and increasing demining operations. Still, Russia’s ability to quickly regroup and replenish its forces despite heavy losses in Ukraine necessitates a stronger response from the alliance to deter it from further aggression against other Black Sea countries.
EU-NATO Coordination and Regional Defense Cooperation: The alignment of the roles of the EU and NATO in the Black Sea region is a persistent challenge. For many years, NATO handled military defense while the EU’s regional initiatives largely sidestepped “hard” security. In a 2023 joint declaration, they pledged to address common threats from Russia and to coordinate efforts in areas like military and cyber defense. Despite much progress, however, they have yet to develop a common strategy to integrate all their tools. Aligning NATO’s military tools and plans with the EU’s political and economic tools, and bringing in partners like Georgia, Ukraine, and Türkiye, are key to building a credible collective security network in the region.
Türkiye must play a central role in this, especially as it controls the straits to the Black Sea and can limit the access of warships of non-littoral countries, as stipulated in the Montreux Convention. It has walked a careful line, supporting Ukraine with drones and facilitating the 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative while avoiding direct confrontation with Russia. In this context, France has called for a closer strategic dialogue with Türkiye, despite past frictions between the two countries.
Energy Security and Infrastructure: Major oil and gas transit infrastructure rests on the floor of the Black Sea basin, which also contains untapped energy reserves. Dominance in regional energy supply previously gave Russia leverage, whether through pipeline politics or exploiting energy dependence, to influence countries like Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine. The war has undermined this leverage. For example, abrupt gas cutoffs drove Moldova to diversify completely away from Russian supply in 2022, a costly move for the country but one that put it on the road to energy independence and strengthened its strategic orientation toward the rest of Europe. The EU has reinforced these efforts by helping Moldova backfill its gas needs through Romania.
Securing alternative energy sources and routes is now a priority for countries in the region. Romania is working on its Neptune Deep offshore gas project and Türkiye has drastically increased its production following the discovery of the Sakarya gas field in its Black Sea waters. Both of these sources can reduce reliance on Russian gas across the region in the coming years. However, these opportunities come with security risks. Russia has shown its willingness to strike energy infrastructure in Ukraine, and it could target critical pipelines or undersea cables in a regional confrontation. It could also use hybrid tactics to undermine energy projects; for instance, by stirring up local opposition through disinformation. European officials have suspected that Russia covertly funded protests against energy investments in Eastern Europe in the past. This illustrates the point that “hard” security and economic security are deeply intertwined, as a damaged pipeline or a blockade on energy shipments could have strategic consequences akin to those of military action.
In response to these security challenges, the new EU strategy states that the Black Sea can be “a cornerstone of stability, sustainable development, and connectivity through partnerships of shared interest”, and it calls for “the establishment of a Black Sea Maritime Security Hub” that will “strengthen maritime safety and security, protect critical maritime infrastructure and the marine environment”. This signals that the EU fully recognizes the strategic importance of the region, but the operational details for establishing such a security hub remain vague. Furthermore, the new document does not address the need for a “hard” security mechanism to deter or to respond to Russian aggression. While this may reflect an intention of the EU not to overlap with NATO, the strategy also fails to mention any plans for improving coordination with the alliance or the United States.
The EU also intends to implement its Black Sea strategy “in synergy with the enlargement process and the Eastern Partnership policy”. While this may provide benefits when engaging with Moldova and Ukraine, it might not prove flexible enough when it comes to Türkiye. The latter’s status as the most important NATO actor in the Black Sea and its interests require a more tailored approach than what the enlargement framework can provide.
Democratic Resilience and Economic Prosperity
In parallel with their security concerns, European and US policymakers have been focusing more on bolstering democratic resilience and economic prosperity in Black Sea countries. Hybrid threats and bad governance can undermine regional stability, and the EU, NATO, and other institutions need to do more to counter these “soft” threats.
Hybrid Threats: Russia has long used disinformation campaigns and electoral interference to destabilize governments in the Black Sea region, and to exploit societal divisions to undermine trust in the EU and NATO. In Moldova, for example, Kremlin-backed outlets and influencers push narratives that EU integration threatens traditional values while smearing pro-EU leaders as authoritarian. Romania too has faced Russian hybrid attacks aimed at destabilizing its democracy. This was particularly evident during the recent presidential election when the sudden and unexpected rise of far-right candidate Călin Georgescu was propelled by a sophisticated disinformation campaign, primarily through social media platforms like TikTok. In Bulgaria, old pro-Russia elites remain entrenched as a result of systemic corruption and oligarchic power, weakening the rule of law and preserving avenues for Russian influence. In recent years, the region has seen the emergence of Chinese influence efforts. Today, Beijing and Moscow alike seek to exploit domestic vulnerabilities, challenge democratic norms, and expand their influence in different Black Sea states.
Democratic Governance and Resilience: The EU relies on the membership aspirations of Black Sea countries to incentivize the wide range of democratic and economic reforms set out in the 35 chapters of its Acquis communautaire. However, prolonged accession processes increase the risk of democratic backsliding, as seen in the case of Georgia. The question of filling the gap left by the end of most US democracy assistance in the region also looms large. Many civil society groups responsible for spearheading democratic reforms there have historically depended on this assistance through the likes of the US Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy. The EU now needs to improve its democracy support in the region, increasing funding for civil society and governance reforms initiatives to ensure momentum is not lost or progress reversed. Russia could exploit any failure of these countries’ engagement with the EU to deliver visible improvements for their citizens, and it could argue more impactfully that Western calls for reforms only bring chaos.
Economic Development: The Black Sea countries have had to deal for many years with disappointing progress in economic development, and they have been hampered by a lack of infrastructure, high levels of corruption, and unsatisfactory governance. This makes it harder for them to achieve a more stable political environment and to reduce their vulnerability to subversive actions by hostile foreign actors. There are several projects and initiatives being considered to address these challenges. EU investment in the Middle Corridor—the planned trade and transport route connecting Central Asia and China to Europe through the South Caucasus and the Black Sea, bypassing Russia—could significantly improve connectivity for the region’s countries. The European Commission has already incorporated the Black Sea transport corridor into its Trans-European Transport Networks plans, and in 2023 Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania, and the EU agreed on the Black Sea Submarine Cable Project, a flagship initiative under the EU’s Global Gateway strategy that entails improved data and logistics links. The Three Seas Initiative, in which Bulgaria and Romania are members, aims to improve north-south connectivity with cross-border energy, transport, and digital infrastructure projects.
The new EU Black Sea strategy similarly highlights a plan for a connectivity agenda, aligned with the Trans-European Transport Network, aimed at linking “Europe with Central Asia through the South Caucasus, boosting economic growth and competitiveness.” This sounds promising and aligns with the Middle Corridor concept. However, there appears to be a disconnect: while the EU is keen to cooperate with Türkiye on security matters, it seems less interested in closer economic ties. It appears to favor connecting to Central Asia through the Black Sea rather than overland through Türkiye. This could hurt the prospects of closer cooperation between them.
Additionally, the EU including in its strategy a focus on “war-related environmental damage, responding to climate change risks, and seizing opportunities for sustainable growth” might come across as tone-deaf to policymakers and citizens in the Black Sea countries, which have been dealing in recent years with the war in Ukrainian, the resulting wave of refugees, energy crises, economic hardship, and Russia’s interference in their elections and other types of hybrid tactics.
Recommendations
A Black Sea strategy coordinated between the EU and NATO can leverage the former’s economic-normative power together with the latter’s hard power. With the Black Sea linking Europe, the South Caucasus, and the Middle East, instability there can quickly spread beyond the region, which makes closer NATO-EU synergy imperative. The EU is sharpening its security role and its new strategy outlines a more assertive posture. It must now translate its Black Sea strategy into coordinated action and align itself fully with NATO’s deterrence posture.
Joint NATO–EU Planning: Coordination must be institutionalized to synergize NATO’s military capabilities and EU tools and mechanisms such as economic sanctions, schemes for investment in industry and infrastructure, and diplomatic pressure.
Greater Maritime Presence: The constraints on military naval access to the Black Sea imposed by the Montreux Convention could be circumvented by investment in increasing the capabilities of the navies of the littoral states, such as Bulgaria and Romania. These reinforced navies could then be deployed on freedom-of-navigation missions under NATO’s command.
Improving Defense Capacity Instruments and Cooperation: The EU should prioritize the modernization and expansion of the defense industry in Bulgaria and Romania by having a multi-annual funding instrument to implement its new security strategy. This fund must go beyond symbolic measures and provide support for infrastructure and industry projects that bolster democratic resilience. In defense cooperation, the EU needs to bring Bulgaria and Romania to the forefront. As the two member states in the Black Sea region, they should be central players in joint procurement, research and development, and broader defense-industrial initiatives. Their greater involvement in programs like the European Defence Fund and Permanent Structured Cooperation would strengthen EU-wide interoperability. While Ukraine’s full integration into the EU’s defense industry is not currently realistic, the EU can focus with it on capacity-building, technology transfer, and the gradual alignment of standards. These steps will lay the groundwork for deeper cooperation in the future. When it comes to Türkiye, pragmatic and project-based engagement in areas of shared interest, such as maritime security, should be prioritized, rather any formal overarching security agreements. Reactivating dormant dialogue platforms on security and defense, while keeping the scope strictly limited to functional cooperation in the Black Sea, could offer a practical way forward.
Defending Vulnerable States: Countering hybrid threats in the region should be included as a strategic priority, with particular attention to Moldova, which Russia targets primarily through information manipulation and interference and through political destabilization, and to Georgia, where Russian influence reinforces domestic actors and narratives that undermine democratic processes and values.
Overall, through close coordination, the EU, NATO, and the United States can secure lasting stability and prosperity in the strategically important Black Sea region. Coordinated efforts will allow them to deter aggression, counter disinformation, and support reforms in countries like Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. A unified strategy will not only shield the Black Sea states from destabilization, but also reinforce stability, security, and economic growth across the broader EU neighborhood.
Note: This brief is based in part on the discussions at an expert workshop on Strategic and Security Challenges for the EU in the Black Sea Region, hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the embassy of Romania in Paris in March 2025, and on a roundtable on “Europe and the Black Sea regional (in)security” hosted by St. Anthony College, Oxford University, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and Chatham House in May 2025.