Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia
TRACECA (Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia) is a unified system of cargo transportation and passenger transportation between the countries of Europe and Asia. It ensures the development of economic, political and cultural relations between the states of this region.
Historically, the connection of the countries of Central and Eastern Asia with Europe was also carried out through the Caucasus, in particular Georgia. Later, during the Greek colonization (8th-7th centuries BC), when their trade factories were established on the Black Sea coast of Colchis, trade contacts between the countries of the West and the East were developed with the help of the South Caucasus roads. From the 4th-3rd centuries BC, trade took on a wide international character — a large trade and transport route emerged, starting from India. This route was a sea route from Central Asia, then a sea-overland route, and it reached Phasis (now Poti) through the Oxus River (now Amu Darya), the Caspian Sea, the Mtkvari River, the Surami Pass, and the Phasis River (now Rioni River). From there, it connected with the countries and cities of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean basin through the Black Sea.
The great geographical discoveries of the Middle Ages made the Silk Road lose its original significance and relevance. The most important historical events at the end of the 20th century — the collapse of the USSR, the accelerated economic rise of Japan, Southeast Asia, and China, the need to integrate the economies of Central Asia, Kazakhstan, and the South Caucasus with the European and world markets, and the rapid growth of independent economies in these countries — put on the agenda the necessity of reviving the historical Silk Road, and today the TRACECA.
In 1993, an international conference was held in Brussels under the auspices of the European Union, which gave rise to a large-scale regional technical assistance program within the framework of TACIS (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States), which was called TRACECA (Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia). In 1995-2008, about three dozen technical assistance projects were implemented within the framework of TACIS-TRACECA. In 1996, four countries – Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Georgia – signed the famous “Serakhs Agreement” (Agreement on International Transit and the Coordination of Railway Transport) in Serakhs, Turkmenistan. Later, Armenia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan joined them. This was the first international agreement aimed at facilitating the development of the transport corridor for the countries of the TRACECA project.
In September 1998, at the summit of the heads of state of the TRACECA project held in Baku, 12 heads of state signed a multilateral agreement “On the Development of International Transport in the Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia”. A significant impetus to the further development of the TRACECA was given by a new initiative of the European Union, which laid the foundation for the international institutionalization of the transport corridor and the TRACECA project. Tbilisi, as the capital of the state that initiated the TRACECA project played an integrative role in the transport corridor, the “supportive framework” of the economy of the South Caucasus countries. A very important stage in the further development of the TRACECA was the railway line connecting Georgia and Turkey (Baku–Tbilisi–Kars railway) becoming operational.
TRACECA, at the current stage of development, has not only turned into a multifunctional corridor connecting Europe-Caucasus-Asia, but has also become a powerful driving factor for the economic, social and political development of the independent states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia.
G. Tsagareli
