Geopolitical factors, including mountains, large streams – the Nile, the Danube, the Rhine – and especially seas, had been well important in forming of world empires. The Mediterranean Sea has particular huge political significance for the West – even its name says how important the sea had been for uniting nations settled down on its banks, mainly for Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians. Already Platon found out how valuable the sea had been at that time. Also eastern states headed for Mediterranean Sea.: Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, and Egypt as well…

Since time immemorial culture had been the connecting link among nations and states, cultural intercommunity had been developing. And mind reached more than weapons…

T.G. Masaryk – the first president of Czechoslovakia, 1918 – 1937
(Karel Čapek: Talks with TGM)

The meaning of the Latin phrase Mare Nostrum is OUR SEA. No Roman trirems have long ago been sailing across the Mediterranean Sea, however, due to integrating Europe we can say again that this territory has been surrounded by the waves of ‘OUR SEA’. The key geographical location of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea has been gaining ground again.

The world has been globalizing and decreasing, nevertheless the problems have not been disappearing. Almost thirty countries can be found on the banks of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Regions with different priorities and different past. The waves of the Sea are just what has been connecting them. Their common problems such as environmental, geopolitical… issues have been penetrating into the continent through the crests of the waves. The goal set by project MARE NOSTRUM is above all to describe both common and unique signs typical for the countries of this geographical region, to create a mosaic connected by waves of OUR SEA, of the place where Europe, Africa and Asia … meet one another just like in Platon’s time.

Project vision: Describe relationship between the Mediterranean countries and the countries of the Black Sea, take down the influence on the sea ecosystem, aspects of the sea ecosystems protection and the relationship between the sea, tourism development and industrial infrastructure of these countries, phenomenon of international tourism, and encountering of cultural and civilizational influences in a region in former times and at present, in generally, encountering of civilizations from Europe, Asia, Africa, international cooperation with influence on the common sea area, new initiative of the EU countries for other cooperation, influence of the stability and prosperity of the countries in the area of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea on development of other countries and localities.