Uniunea Europeană și cooperarea în zona balcanilor

The Balkans region has inherited a negative connotation from the beginning of the 20th century, first in the Balkanic wars and mostly after the former Yugoslavia’s break up. The new created states were usually referred to as a whole by the Western powers because they had a common past; they were facing the same political and economic problems and very often they were hostile to each other. The region of Balkans is notorious for its instability and for the four wars that occurred in the 90s, long time after the European powers promised that no war is going to take place again on the land of Europe.

Meanwhile, the European Union was created and the European continent grew stronger both economically and as a player on the international politics arena. Thus, the EU couldn’t overlook the conflicts that were happening in its close proximity, to be exact in the Balkans. The first European program conceived for this territory was the “Regional Approach” and it was launched in 1996 in order to improve the peace processes from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia and improve the stability in the whole area. The Regional Approach was focused on the former Yugoslavian states minus Slovenia (which was in a stage of more advanced cooperation with EU) plus Albania (the general situation of the country was similar to the one of former Yugoslavia states). The objective was to enhance the regional cooperation and stabilization and to help these countries to reform their political and economical structures by offering in exchange preferential trade relations and financial support. However, the assistance varied from a country to another depending on their internal and external situation. Thus Albania and Macedonia were rewarded for their stronger cooperation and democratization processes with enclosure in the PHARE programme and Trade and Cooperation Agreements, while Croatia and Yugoslavia were penalized for their authoritarian regimes lead by Tudjman and Milosevic. These circumstances created relations with EU based more on bilateralism than on common collaboration that eventually led to a stagnation of the Regional Approach process.

The Stabilization and Association Process and the European integration prospect

Once with the Kosovo war outbreak the Regional Approach revealed its shortcomings and it was time for a new way of tackling with the region’s problems since EU couldn’t prevent the hostile manifestations once again. The failure of the previous efforts was caused by the overlook of some important factors like the stabilizing potential of Bulgaria and Romania and of the rest of Eastern Balkans; the initiatives and programs were running in parallel without coordination, sometimes even in competition; the political element wasn’t strong enough to make a real and long-lasting change. Critical situations need immediate solutions, thus EU formulated a new policy for the region - which was now known as the Western Balkans - implemented through two major instruments: the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP) and the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe (SP). The first one is addressed to the five states of the Western Balkans by giving them a chance of a possible future integration in European Union if they comply with a set of conditions. This strategy has already proven itself as effective in the case of Central and East European (CEE) countries between 1993 and 2004. The countries resolved their conflicts simply because it was a requirement for accession at the Copenhagen Summit in 1993. Following the example of the Europe agreements that have been signed in the past with the CEE candidate states, there were established Stabilization and Association Agreements (SAA) to be signed whenever the countries will have accomplished the conditions for being potential