Abstract
Bulgaria's Black Sea Policy and the Impact of European Union
There are different reasons that affect Bulgaria’s policy toward Black Sea region as a country which has special relations with Russia and as a Black Sea littoral state. The fact that Russia is historically seen as a brother and a friendly country by Bulgarian citizens and this approach is not shared by both NATO and EU in the same way, causes dilemmas in Bulgarian foreign policy. It i possible to observe that, as a country which is totally dependent on Russia in terms of its energy needs, Bulgaria, tries to follow more independent and pro-European policy toward Black Sea basin but its dependency on the energy puts the limits. Therefore, Bulgaria that recently began to look for alternative enegy sources to the Russian gas, began to support the projects such as Nabucco. As a result of European policies launched towards the Black Sea, Bulgaria tried to become more influential actor in the region, however, failed to do so due to its limited economic possibilities. <
Keywords
Black Sea Basin, Bulgarian Foreign Policy, Russia, European Neighborhood Policy, Energy Security