On October 5, a public hearing on the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) took place in the European Parliament in Brussels, featuring MEPs and experts, including representatives from the Three Seas Initiative Research Center project at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
“If the Three Seas Initiative didn’t exist, it would need to be invented,” emphasized Georgios Mitrakos, Director General of the International Centre for Black Sea Studies (ICBSS) in Athens, underscoring the significance of energy projects as a key pillar of 3SI.
Professor Agnieszka Orzelska-Stączek, head of the Three Seas Initiative Research Center at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, outlined the main goals of 3SI—a political and economic project launched by Poland and Croatia in 2015 to improve infrastructure links between the northern and southern regions of the EU’s eastern flank.
Gediminas Varvuolis, Lithuania’s Ambassador for Connectivity, highlighted the potential that could be unlocked by building north-south connections and fostering synergy across EU sectoral policies.
Participants agreed that the Three Seas Initiative offers a natural response to many of the European Union’s economic challenges. Covering nearly one-third of the EU’s territory and home to over 112 million citizens, the 3SI countries represent one of the world’s most industrialized and fastest-growing regions.
