Black Sea Basin Cross-Border Cooperation Programs: Challenges and Prospective for Building Network Governance in Eastern Partnership Countries

The article focuses on the practices of cross-border cooperation (CBC) in the framework of the European Union (EU) Eastern partnership policy from the point of view of promoting the partner-oriented approach in the EU-neighbour relations. Using the concept of network governance study builds framework for including the impact of external partners on the process of exporting the network governance and raising region competitiveness. The article analyses Black Sea Basin CBC Programs (2007-2013, 2014-2020) and argues that the partnership principle enshrined in the EU’s policy approach in some notion contradicts to the national practices of building regions competitiveness. It demonstrates that on first (2007-2013) and second (2014-2020)  stages the EU Programs’ institutional structures have been created on the principle of partnership, but the ENPI’s and after ENI’s implementation framework is mostly failed to address this approach, because not taking into account economic and social asymmetries which lead to increasing competition about market access or foreign direct investments between the CBC regions. Thus, new legislative framework need to be developed for enhancing the partnership principle within the European Neighborhood Instrument (ENI) CBC creating more opportunities for the combating asymmetries between regional actors in the Black Sea region.