Advancing regional cooperation and EU integration through the Think Balkan’s initiative

The ‘Advancing regional cooperation and EU integration through the Think Balkan’s initiative’ project represents a continuation of the well-established cooperation under the umbrella of Think Balkans consortium between 10 (ten) organisations from the Western Balkans (WB) and the Visegrad group (V4) of countries.

The project is implemented by the Institute for Democracy (IDSCS), in collaboration with the European Movement in Serbia (EMinS) and the Albanian Institute for International Studies (AIIS) from Albania.

The overall objective of the project is to enhance regional cooperation between the WB countries by sharing scientific knowledge and practical experience on the new EU accession methodology and to further expand the existing people-to-people links primarily in the three targeted countries: Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia.

Based on the lessons learned, this project aims to promote active participation in policy-making and foster democratic debate based on relevant data and information by further: 1) promoting cooperation among think tanks, CSOs and experts in WB; 2) Enhancing dialogue with the WB MFAs for issues related to EU accession negotiations; 3) Exploiting the potential with the establishment of Think Balkans to strengthen people to people links.

In fulfilling these objectives, the project partners will organize three events in the Western Balkans region. The events will take place in Skopje in January 2023, Tirana in March 2023 and Belgrade in June 2023. The partners will produce a position paper based on the discussion on the regional cooperation forum in Skopje and a policy brief based on the lessons learnt from the exchange visits including policy recommendations for future activities.

The project duration is 6 months, that is, from January 2023 to June 2023.

Approved funds from WBF: 11.990 EUR