International Agreements as Instruments for Furthering Regional Cooperation in Southeast Europe

Abstract

Regional cooperation between the countries of Southeast Europe and the Western Balkans was launched more than two decades ago. Since then, a number of different initiatives, cooperative platforms and other means of international cooperation have been deployed and used for the sake of strengthening this cooperation. There are almost all areas of interstate actions that have been included in the intergovernmental coordination and cooperation with a varying degree of connecting and integrating them. The concrete modalities of cooperation included not only political manifestos, joint declaratory statements by the governmental representatives, but over time materialised in a more solemn and official forms, such as the one of international agreements. Some cooperative initiatives resulted in the establishment of intergovernmental organisations and entailed further coordination, or even harmonisation, of the national policies in certain areas by conclusion of multilateral agreements. In this respect, this paper aims at exploring in which manners furthering regional inter-state cooperation was implemented via conclusion of international agreements as the tools of intergovernmental interaction, which are governed by International Law. The paper examines used formats of the agreements as well as the extent of interconnecting activities and coordinating efforts in the areas covered by concrete agreements.