When it became clear at the end of the first decade of the 21st century that there would be no further enlargement of the European Union, primarily due to the institutional crisis within the EU itself, and that the further expansion of NATO to the East would bring the Collective West into open conflict with Russia, as Putin clearly warned in his historic Munich speech in 2007, the Collective West changed the form and tactics of integrating the strategically important Black Sea-Balkan basin.
A NEW PHASE OF THE OLD “DRIVE TO THE EAST”
In the new phase of its old “Drive to the East,” the Collective West replaced traditional institutional integration with a more informal and flexible approach. Consequently, the European Union adopted two macro-regional strategies in 2011 and 2014—the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) and the Strategy for the Adriatic-Ionian Region (EUSAIR)—aimed at coordinating policies and activities in priority areas between EU member states and third countries of the Danube and Adriatic-Ionian regions.
The geopolitical and security background of such integrative, seemingly exclusively economic, infrastructural, and environmental macro-regional EU strategies becomes evident when the EU Strategy for the Danube Region is analyzed in light of the proxy war the Collective West is waging against Russia on Ukrainian territory.
CONNECTING THE TERRITORIES OF THE HISTORICAL INTERMARIUM
Ukraine is included in the EU Danube Strategy, along with five non-EU countries from the region—Moldova, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro—alongside nine EU member states from the Danube region: Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and Romania. In the original Action Plan adopted by the European Commission in 2010, three priority areas were highlighted in which a high level of coordination among the Danube region countries was to be achieved in the following years:
1) Increasing mobility and multimodality of cross-border transportation infrastructure among the countries of this region;
2) Sustainable energy development, including the creation of a joint energy infrastructure and a common energy market, as well as joint efforts to increase sources of “clean” energy;
3) Cross-border promotion of culture and tourism and, in general, contacts among people in the Danube region.
Of particular importance is cross-border cooperation in the field of energy. According to the Action Plan, the European Union plans to extend its internal energy market to the aforementioned Danube region countries. Regional cooperation in the energy sector within the Danube region is primarily part of the EU’s broader strategy to build energy interconnectors along the North-South corridor, through which the territory of the historical Intermarium, from the Baltic to the Adriatic and Black Seas, would be connected into a unified energy space. This is now revived under the Three Seas Initiative.
MEMORANDUM SIGNED IN KLADOVO
When it comes to energy interconnectors, the 2010 EU Action Plan for the region covered by the Danube Strategy envisions, among other things, the construction of gas interconnectors between Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia; the connection of electrical grids between Romania and Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova, Hungary and Croatia, Hungary and Romania, and Austria and Hungary; as well as the construction of a high-voltage power line between Romania and Serbia and the energy interconnection between the EU and Ukraine. The 2010 EU Action Plan for the Danube Region, which is to be implemented within the framework of the Danube Strategy, also included the construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal on the Croatian island of Krk, along with feasibility studies for similar terminals in Romania and Bulgaria.
Regarding Serbia, it is important to highlight that the construction of the Trans-Balkan power line between Pančevo and Reșița in Romania was completed in 2017, and the Bulgaria-Serbia gas interconnector was completed in 2023. On August 5 of this year, Serbian Energy Minister Dubravka Đedović Handanović signed a Memorandum in Kladovo with her Romanian counterpart for the construction of a Serbia-Romania gas interconnector, which would connect the gas storage facility in Mokrin with the Romanian BRUA pipeline from Bușteni to Recaș.
GEOPOLITICAL SEPARATION OF THE DANUBE REGION FROM RUSSIA
The energy integration of the Danube region through the construction of gas and electricity interconnectors aims to reduce the region’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels from Russia. In pursuit of the same goal, the EU promotes the use of renewable energy sources in the Danube region and popularizes the “Green Agenda.” The geopolitical separation of the Danube region from Russia and its inclusion in the exclusive sphere of control by the Collective West is concealed in the 2020 Action Plan of the Danube Strategy under environmental ideology. Among other things, the plan emphasizes the necessity of decarbonizing centralized district heating systems established in these countries during the communist period, which primarily rely on fossil fuels, especially gas and coal.
In the Action Plan revised in 2020, the purpose of the Danube Strategy, as a macro-regional integrative strategy of the EU, was interpreted for the first time openly in a geopolitical context. In this document, the Danube region, together with the Black Sea basin, is referred to as the “gateway” to Central Asia, Russia, and China, as well as to Turkey and the Middle East. This clearly highlights the critical significance of this macro-region in the new version of the Romano-Germanic “Drive to the East.”
THE STRONGEST CONDEMNATION OF RUSSIA’S “AGGRESSIVE WAR”
After the start of the armed phase of the Collective West’s hybrid war against Russia, there was no longer a need to conceal the neo-colonial interests of the Collective West in the Danube region under the guise of Brussels and its overseas mentor’s supposed concern for the environment, transportation mobility, and energy independence of the countries in this region. The key points of the “Vienna Danube Declaration,” unanimously supported this June by all members of the Danube Strategy, including Serbia, clearly reveal the original intentions of the initiators of this macro-regional integration, who assigned the Danube Strategy the role of Neumann’s Mitteleuropa in an Anglo-Saxon interpretation. The Vienna Declaration states that the Danube region, which encompasses 14 countries and 115 million people, faces numerous threats, particularly emphasizing the “aggressive war” of Russia against Ukraine, which is “strongly condemned” by all member countries of the Danube Strategy.
At the same time, the member countries of the Danube Strategy, in the same Declaration, express support for the territorial integrity of Moldova, while ignoring the unresolved status of Transnistria, the threat to Gagauzia’s autonomy by the official authorities in Chișinău, the discrimination against Moldova’s Russian-speaking population, and especially the open aspirations of official Bucharest towards a Greater Romania.
The Declaration insists on further strengthening the ties between the EU and Ukraine, as well as between the EU and the Western Balkans, and highlights the strategic importance of the Black Sea basin for the EU.
DANUBE—THE RIVER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION?
In the Declaration, the Danube is explicitly referred to as the “River of the European Union,” clearly signaling that the Collective West, represented by Brussels, treats the Danube region as a zone of its exclusive influence. Given the wartime circumstances and the new role assigned to the Danube region, the Vienna Declaration emphasizes not only the infrastructural and energy connectivity of the region, as before, but also joint educational programs. These include, among other things, efforts to increase digital literacy, so that the populations of Danube countries can effectively counter disinformation on the internet. Although Russia is not explicitly mentioned in this part of the Declaration, it is clear that these activities are primarily directed against Moscow. Thus, the legitimacy of the Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” in Brussels is ensured in the Danube countries through the adoption of such a Declaration by all member states of the Danube Strategy.
IN THE SERVICE OF HEGEMONY, NOT ECONOMY
The Danube, along with the Baltic and Adriatic-Ionian macro-regional strategies of the EU, exclusively serves to maintain the hegemony of the Collective West in regions of strategic importance as territorial connectors of Eurasia, rather than to promote the economic prosperity of local states and peoples, as is often claimed in Serbian social science, where under the guise of scientific analysis, platitudes about economic prosperity, mobility, the knowledge society, and the green agenda from official EU and Danube Strategy documents are parroted. For Serbia, and especially for the Serbian people as a whole, whose survival on historical Serbian lands as a sovereign entity depends entirely on remaining outside Euro-Atlantic integrations (EU = NATO), participation in such macro-regional integration critically endangers their interests. This integration completely incorporates the Danube region into the EU’s energy and transportation systems, and through them, its security system, even without Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Republika Srpska) formally joining the EU and NATO.
COMPENSATION FOR THE LOSS OF GEOPOLITICAL CHOICE
Such a high level of coordination completely calls into question Serbia’s officially proclaimed military neutrality, especially given the fact that, since the start of hostilities in Ukraine, the European Union has rapidly been transforming from an economic into a political and, above all, military-security alliance. Consequently, the funds Serbia receives from IPA (Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance) to implement activities outlined in the strategic documents of the Danube Strategy are minimal compensation for the loss of strategic geopolitical choice, as a result of being drawn into seemingly benign regional initiatives like the Danube Strategy.
