TRACECA
The Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia ( TRACECA ; German Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia ) is a transport and communication project that aims to connect Europe and Central Asia . Like the colloquial project of the same name, One Belt, One Road, it is intended to revive the west-east connections and routes of the historic Great Silk Road as the “New Silk Road” .
history
The project was created after a proposal by the Georgian President at the time, Eduard Shevardnadze . The EU Commission then initiated the TRACECA project as part of its TACIS program. At first little happened and only after the founding of the GUAM organization in 1997 did TRACECA gain new momentum. TRACECA was the largest TACIS program before TACIS was discontinued in 2007.
Parallel to and in addition to TRACECA, the EU initiated the INOGATE ( IN terstate O il and GA s T ransportation to E urope) project, which aimed at the gas and oil pipelines of Central Asia. The project was discontinued in 2016.
On September 7th and 8th, 1998, a conference on the "Restoration of the historic Great Silk Road" was held in Baku . Finally, Armenia , Azerbaijan , Bulgaria , Georgia , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , Moldova , Romania , Tajikistan , Turkey , Ukraine and Uzbekistan signed a "Multilateral Agreement on International Transport and the Development of a European-Caucasian-Asian Corridor" .
An Intergovernmental Committee of the TRACECA States (TRACECA / IGC) began its work at a conference in March 2000 in Tbilisi . In February 2001 it opened a permanent secretariat in Baku with the help of the EU . The secretariat is divided into four working groups: trade, motor vehicle, rail and sea transport.
Up to 2002, 46 individual projects for a total of 99.6 million US dollars had been financed from the TRACECA budget, including 33 research projects and 13 investment projects for the reconstruction of an infrastructure. Around 50% of the budget is earmarked for investments that will make the TRACECA program more attractive and create a favorable investment climate. Among other TRACECA funds is a railway line from Uzbekistan was Qo'ng'irot into Kazakh Aktau built and a ferry line from Aktau to Azerbaijan Baku established.
Transports in the TRACECA corridor have increased steadily since 1998. The route experienced a particular boom through the transport of humanitarian aid from Europe to Afghanistan . Azerbaijan recorded 3.4 million tons of cargo in transit that year. In 1999 the number increased to 4.4 million tons, in 2000 to 5.7 million tons, in 2001 to 7.7 million tons and in 2002 to 8.5 million tons.
The upturn led to the establishment of new companies in the participating countries. The Silk Road Companies Georgia group of companies (SRG, Silk Road Companies of Georgia ) was founded in Georgia . Together with the Kazakh bank Turan Alem (BTA), she founded the Silk Road Bank (SRB, Seidenstraßen-Bank ) in March 2005 , entered into a cooperation with the French company BNP Paribas and participated in the conversion of the former Interhotel Iveria into a five- Star hotel in the center of Tbilisi.
Russian competition
Since TRACECA is bypassing Russia , Russian officials are suspicious of the TRACECA project. To compete with TRACECA, the Russian government initiated the International North – South Transport Corridor (INSTC) in 2000 . The INSTC corridor is supposed to bring shipping containers from South Asia to Eastern Europe in 20 instead of 45 days. The transport costs should therefore fall by 30%. With the integration of the Caucasian and Central Asian countries, INSTC is in competition with TRACECA. In 2019, Armenia , Azerbaijan , India , Iran , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , Russia , Oman , Syria , Tajikistan , Turkey , Ukraine and Belarus are full members of the INSTC. Bulgaria, in turn, is an observer member.
analysis
In 2018, an expert on German foreign policy ruled that the TRACECA initiative "hadn't come off".
See also
- 2018 EU-Asia Connectivity Strategy
- Kars – Akhalkalaki – Tbilisi – Baku railway line
- One Belt, One Road
- Trans-Asian Railway
- Trans-European Networks
literature
- Eduard Shevardnadze: The new silk road - traffic route into the 21st century . Econ, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-430-17955-6
Web links
- traceca-org.org (en, ru)
- Russian alternatives to TRACECA ( Memento from January 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (en)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Keith Fisher: A Meeting of Blood and Oil: The Balkan Factor in Western Energy Security , in: Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Vol. 4 (2002), No. 1, pp. 75-89 (here: pp. 85). Available here.
- ↑ Flemming Splidsboel ‐ Hansen: GUUAM and the future of CIS military cooperation , in: European Security, Jg. 9 (2000), No. 4, pp. 92-110 (here: p. 100). Available here.
- ↑ Sebastian Mayer: The Relations of the European Union to the South Caucasus: From Pragmatic Strategic Politics? , in: Integration, Vol. 25 (2002), No. 2, pp. 125-138 (here: p. 128). Available here.
- ↑ Anja Franke / Andrea Gawrich / Inna Melnykovska / Rainer Schweickert: The European Union's Relations with Ukraine and Azerbaijan , in: Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 26 (2010), No. 2, pp. 149-183 (here: pp. 163). Available here.
- ↑ Samuel James Lussac: Ensuring European Energy Security in Russian 'Near Abroad': The Case of the South Caucasus , in: European Security, Jg. 19 (2010), No. 4, pp. 607-625 (here: p. 610 ). Available here.
- ↑ Nicola P. Contessi: Foreign Policy Diversification and Intercontinental Transport Corridors: The Case of Kazakhstan's Railways Diplomacy , in: Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 70 (2018), No. 5, pp. 759-790 (here: p. 770 ). Available here.
- ↑ Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra: The North-South corridor: Prospects of multilateral trade in Eurasia , rbth.com March 14, 2012.
- ↑ Stephen Blank: Infrastructural policy and national strategies in Central Asia: the Russian example , in: Central Asian Survey, Jg. 23 (2004), No. 3–4, pp. 225–248 (here: p. 235). Available here.
- ↑ Jörg Kronauer: EU challenges China , in: Junge Welt, September 28, 2018.