With or without the European Union: the convention for the protection of the Black Sea against pollution

Abstract

The Black Sea is an enclosed sea surrounded by six coastal countries, of which Bulgaria and Romania are EU Member States. The Convention for the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution was ratified in 1994 by all coastal countries. This Convention is the only European regional sea convention to which the EU is not a Party. While Romania and Bulgaria are in favor of EU accession to the Convention, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine thus far have blocked accession. In this paper, we develop a negotiation model with endogenous enforcement and exogenous fraud to analyze the different positions of groups of coastal countries relative to EU accession to the Convention. Our model contributes to defining a proposal that the EU could make to the opposing states such that they accept the EU as a Party to the Convention. In that context we investigate also whether Romania and Bulgaria might be better off delegating their decision power to the EU, rather than retaining their individual voting rights.