- The Three Seas Initiative is a joint Polish-Croatian project, launched in 2016, with the aim of strengthening trade, infrastructure, energy and political co-operation among countries bordering the Adriatic, the Baltic and the Black Sea.
- The following 12 countries are part of the initiative: Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria.
- Most of the 12 countries were in the Soviet sphere of influence after World War Two until 1989 and more than half of those joined the European Union in 2004. Nearly all are heavily reliant on Russian gas and oil imports.
- Poland, the EU's largest eastern economy, has constructed an LNG terminal on its Baltic coast and is eyeing potential exports of the imported gas to other countries in the region. Croatia plans to complete its own LNG terminal in 2019.
The PiS government said the construction of the so-called Via Carpatia highway is the most important regional infrastructure project. This will connect Lithuania's port of Klaipeda with Thessaloniki in Greece, passing through eastern Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
Currently, there are no north-south highways in eastern Poland and most highways built so far help connect Poland with its biggest trading partner and western neighbor Germany.
For more than half a century after the end of World War II, infrastructure interconnections on the continent focused on the development of the East-West axis. During the Cold War, pipelines that delivered Soviet oil and gas to Central and Eastern Europe also served as tools of submission and control. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, countries in the region, understandably, focused on integrating their economies into advanced Western markets, to a large extent neglecting intraregional infrastructure development along the North-South axis.
In 2015, Croatia and Poland launched an effort to accelerate the construction and modernization of North-South cross-border energy, transportation, and telecommunications infrastructure across Central Europe. By intersecting and expanding legacy East-West communications links, these projects promise to simultaneously increase economic engagement among the national economies of the Three Seas region and between the region and Western Europe.
Implementation of the Three Seas agenda would have positive strategic implications for Europe. First, it would establish a powerful set of economic arteries, including energy pipelines, powerlines, highways and railways, and telecommunication lines, that would mobilize the economic potential of a region that is home to 105 million people and has a $3.3 trillion GDP.
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(from the Atlantic Council )For more than half a century after the end of World War II, infrastructure interconnections on the continent focused on the development of the East-West axis. During the Cold War, pipelines that delivered Soviet oil and gas to Central and Eastern Europe also served as tools of submission and control. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, countries in the region, understandably, focused on integrating their economies into advanced Western markets, to a large extent neglecting intraregional infrastructure development along the North-South axis.
In 2015, Croatia and Poland launched an effort to accelerate the construction and modernization of North-South cross-border energy, transportation, and telecommunications infrastructure across Central Europe. By intersecting and expanding legacy East-West communications links, these projects promise to simultaneously increase economic engagement among the national economies of the Three Seas region and between the region and Western Europe.
Implementation of the Three Seas agenda would have positive strategic implications for Europe. First, it would establish a powerful set of economic arteries, including energy pipelines, powerlines, highways and railways, and telecommunication lines, that would mobilize the economic potential of a region that is home to 105 million people and has a $3.3 trillion GDP.
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