On Regions and Regional Framings: the Missing Link between the European Union and the Caspian Sea Basin

That the European Union acknowledges the relevance of the Caspian Sea basin is clearly confirmed by the centrality of this regional complex in its overall energy strategy and policy. Promotion of sustainable development of energy resources; exchange of policy, regulatory and technical know-how; deployment and advancement of new energy sources; modernization of existing and the promotion of new energy infrastructures and transportation systems: all these issues figure prominently in the European Union’s approach toward the Caspian. Resource-related issues assessed, is there a European Union’s strategy toward the Caspian in the same vein as it exists for Central Asia? Going even further than that: is the Caspian recognized as a region or does it represents a frontier among other regional complexes? While covering the energy domain, the chapter considers whether regional policies have been envisaged to face challenges and in which sectors, with a peculiar attention to the transnational issues addressed in the first part of this work (geopolitical positioning; hard and soft security threats).