Author: Megi Benia, UGSPN Affiliated Fellow
On 28 May 2025, the European Union unveiled its long-anticipated Black Sea Strategy, which aims to enhance peace and security, promote sustainable economic development, and support democratic consolidation through increased EU engagement across the region. The strategy is based on three core pillars: 1) enhancing security, stability, and resilience; 2) fostering sustainable growth and prosperity; and 3) promoting environmental protection, climate change resilience and preparedness, and civil protection. Moreover, the strategy emphasizes the importance of close cooperation with EU candidate countries in the Black Sea region, which is expected to ensure full preparedness for future membership.
Through the strategy, the EU envisions bolstering maritime security, protecting critical underwater infrastructure, enhancing anti-mine capabilities, and bolstering resilience against hybrid threats. These efforts are aimed at deterring potential military aggression and fostering a more secure regional environment. Additionally, the strategy underscores the importance of leveraging the geostrategic location of the region for diversifying energy resources and developing flexible transit routes.
The security of the wider Black Sea region, with the South Caucasus as an integral part of it, has long been one of Georgia’s foremost foreign and security policy priorities. Under normal circumstances, this strategic vision would have represented a unique opportunity for Georgia: a chance to strengthen national security, contribute to regional stability, and integrate more closely into the European security architecture by participating in the cooperation mechanisms outlined in the strategy. However, the current political developments in Georgia leave a limited space for optimism.
Despite the apparent strategic importance of the Black Sea, for years the United States and Western institutions refrained from adopting a comprehensive strategic framework or taking concrete measures towards the region. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the militarization of the Black Sea basin partially altered this stance. In NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept, the Black Sea was designated a region of strategic importance, and the Alliance extended its Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) by deploying multinational brigades in both Bulgaria and Romania. Concurrently, the United States increased its military presence in these two NATO members (on land and in airspace), and in 2023, the U.S. Department of State presented its Black Sea Strategy to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Georgia, as a country with clearly articulated European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations, had consistently called on the EU, NATO, and the United States to adopt a comprehensive and results-oriented strategic approach to the wider Black Sea region and to increase their political and military engagement. These efforts led to practical cooperation with NATO on Black Sea security, exemplified by biannual port visits of the Standing NATO Maritime Groups to Georgian territorial waters and conducting joint exercises with the Coast Guard. Furthermore, on a regular basis, Georgia held strategic consultations, including the information-sharing on the evolving security environment in the Black Sea. At the same time, Georgia actively participated in all the relevant bilateral and multilateral initiatives on the Black Sea security.
Nevertheless, it was evident that these efforts alone would be insufficient to ensure a robust security architecture, particularly in light of Russia’s deep-rooted strategic interests in the region. Georgia persistently sought to persuade its Western partners that the wider Black Sea plays a critical role in strengthening Euro-Atlantic security. It is not an overstatement to suggest that Georgia was often the only state in the region consistently making this case.
Today, as the long-standing neglect of the strategic importance of the wider Black Sea is being fundamentally reconsidered, Georgia risks missing a historic opportunity. The components of the EU’s new strategy largely reflect the vision that the Georgian side has championed for years: namely, that only the tangible involvement of Western institutions can serve as a credible deterrent to the military and influence operations emanating from Russia. In stark contrast, contemporary Georgia finds itself lacking a clear strategic vision for the Black Sea. The periodically reiterated discourse on Georgia’s role as a mere transit corridor is outdated and misaligned with the demands of the evolving regional security environment.
A particularly concerning development is Georgia’s democratic backsliding, which increasingly distances the country from the EU and its institutional frameworks, which was explicitly acknowledged in the EU’s Black Sea Strategy itself. Compounding the issue is the recent dismissal of experienced public officials from Georgia’s foreign and security policy institutions. These are individuals who for years were instrumental in advancing Georgia’s strategic posture in the region. Their removal threatens to erode institutional memory, which is vital for sustainable development and national resilience, particularly in states like Georgia.
Georgia, once a state well-positioned not only to benefit from but also to contribute meaningfully to the strengthening of regional security in the Black Sea, now finds itself on the margins of a strategic opportunity it helped shape but may no longer be able to seize.