What Is Bucharest Nine?
The Bucharest Nine (B 9) rejected the Russian claim about the eastward “expansion” of North-Atlantic Treaty Alliance organisation (NATO).
- They underlined that NATO is not an organisation that “expanded” to the east”, rather, these countries as the independent European states that decided on our own to go west.
- The B 9 is a group of nine NATO countries in Eastern Europe that became part of the US-led military alliance after the end of the Cold War.
- The B 9 or Bucharest Format, often abbreviated as the B9, was founded on November 4, 2015.
- It takes its name from Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
- B9, it is also regarded as the “voice of the Eastern Flank” in the NATO alliance.
- The group was created on the initiative of Klaus Iohannis, who has been President of Romania and Andrzej Duda, who became President of Poland in August 2015, at the High-Level Meeting of the States from Central and Eastern Europe in Bucharest.
- The members of B9 are Romania and Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
- B9 offers a platform for deepening the dialogue and consultation among the participant allied states across the members of NATO.
- All nine countries were once closely associated with the now dissolved Soviet Union, but later chose the path of democracy.
- All members of the B9 are part of the European Union (EU) and NATO.
- The B9 countries have been critical of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine since 2014, when the war in the Donbas started and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.
