CONTRIBUTION TO THE ORGANIZATION FOR DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT - GUAM OVERCOME THE GLOBAL CRISIS

Abstract

South-Eastern Europe, GUAM being its natural part of, became a scene of
promotion of a large number of regional initiatives after the end of the Cold War;
some of them were transformed into a full-scale international and regional
organizations of cooperation. GUAM was the last of them; Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Moldova have taken this decision only on May 23, 2006 at the
Summit in Kyiv, while GUAM initiative was founded on October 10, 1997.
If one takes a glance at the map of Europe, it will be clear what a small space
is the territory of GUAM, as well as its population, not to mention the level of
industrial production or trade. At the same time the same glance would say to any
unbiased expert what the potential this space has. Needless to say that only under
the condition of coordinated efforts, aimed at the formation of space of civilized
cooperation based on European principles, values and practice, this potential can
be used effectively.
At the same time an indisputable advantage of GUAM is the fact that all
member-countries are operating based at the same set of values; the system of
foreign policy priorities are also very close or even coinciding in main
components and, consequently, the decision-making process is efficient and
dynamic even dealing with the most difficult problems, global crisis included.
UAM experience in developing Free Trade Area, diversification potential and
implementation of Trade and Transport Facilitation Project is a vivid
demonstration of that fact.