The Black Sea Universities Network has been initiated as an inter-university cooperation framework for the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization. The rectors and representatives of more than 60 universities agreed on the principles that have to govern a cooperation platform where the members of the academic community might feel an extension of their University.

The methodological approach for the cooperative activities has been approved in the BSUN 2008 Congress held in Kiev. In this perspective, there are brainstorming activities in the preparatory phase of the BSUN ordinary Congress and there are identified priorities which are debated during the session of the Congress. The added value of the Network might be defined from different perspectives as followings:

• The first perspective is for the individual universities to get support in addressing the needs of the market.
• The second perspective is in the area of transferring best quality academic programs from one university to another.
• The third perspective is the access of professors and students to the most developed facilities for education and scientific research of the other universities.
• Another perspective is the representation and lobbying capacity, because the position of a grouping of universities can be expressed at the highest levels of decision makers. In the case of BSUN, it is participating to different sessions of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Cooperation and to the United Nations, in the areas related to higher education, scientific research and sustainable development.