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The Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), an initiative launched in February to promote regional cooperation in the Western Balkans, is hanging in the balance as the region hovers between resolving the conflicts it has inherited or a prolonged period of stagnation, according to RCC Secretary General Hido Biscevic. Other related news: MEP Van Orden: 'Not happy' about Kosovo outcome Poll: Serbs pro-EU, but not ready to give up Kosovo Croatia says it will do 'whatever it takes' to join EU in 2010 Montenegro's pro-European president re-elected EU to 'wait and see' on Serbia, Turkey accession Speaking at a conference organised by the Friedrich Ebert foundation, Biscevic stressed: "It's make or break time."  The new structure, which is a regionally-owned successor to the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, is taking shape at a difficult moment, he emphasised, pointing to indications that the Balkans are again becoming a playground for "strategic players". 

he Stability Pact, which was launched in 1999 at the EU's initiative, aimed to stabilise the region and enhance conflict prevention by bringing the participants' political strategies in line with one another and coordinating new initiatives in the region. When the Commission decided that the Stability Pact had achieved its objectives and could be phased out, the countries of the region decided to establish a successor to the Pact to continue promoting regional cooperation – the Regional Cooperation Council, based in Sarajevo.  The Stability Pact, which will finish its work in June 2008, handed over its mandate to the RCC on 27 February 2008 and the new structure is now becoming operational. But fresh difficulties in the region following Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia mean that there is still a major role to play for the international community. 

Commission adopts multi-annual planning of financial assistance to the Western Balkans and Turkey The Commission has completed today the strategic planning of EU financial support for 2008-2010 to the candidate countries and potential candidates: Croatia, Turkey, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo[1]. This financial assistance aims to enhance political and economic reform and development to realise their European perspective. For 2008-2010, the overall indicative amount of EU financial assistance under the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) is €4.471 billion.

Croatia has been told by EU officials that it is possible to enter the European Union even if the bloc has not sorted out its institutional problems. "We have been reassured by a number of people from the commission and from the EU member countries that should there be no constitutional arrangement that there are other means (...) that would provide for Croatia to join as the 28th member," Croatia's foreign minister Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic told EUobserver in an interview

On 8 November 2006 the Commission approved the Strategy Paper and the candidate countries' (Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey) and potential candidate countries' (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo under UN Security Council Resolution 1244) progress reports on their road towards the EU.

ZAGREB -- The European Commission (EC) has temporarily frozen Croatian Phare projects. It has also reduced the funds allocated to the country via the IPA program by EUR 5mn because of weaknesses in creating a decentralized system of management of projects backed by EU funds.

In its 2007 progress report on Croatia, the EC said that the country had shown great weaknesses last year in implementing a decentralized system for management of pre-accession assistance, said Nagy and warned that Zagreb had to deal with these weaknesses as soon as possible.

Despite "fatigue" setting in amongst EU member states as a result of the ongoing economic crisis, the process of enlargement of the bloc should not be neglected, the Czech deputy prime minister, Alexandr Vondra, said on Wednesday (18 February).

But the pace of the process has slowed down in recent months as several other issues, most notably the global financial crisis, attract much of the EU's attention. Additionally, some candidate countries face blockages due to political disputes with individual EU states. The border dispute between Slovenia and Croatia, which provoked Ljubljana to block the opening or closing of 11 chapters from Croatia's EU accession negotiations package in December, is only the most recent such dust-up.

Enlargement is good for you Meanwhile, the European Commission will on Friday publish a detailed report on the benefits of the EU's two latest enlargements - in 2004 and 2007 - taking in a total of 12 member states.

With just over a week to go before Sweden takes over the helm of the EU's six-month rotating presidency, the country's foreign minister, Carl Bildt, has made it clear he does not intend to waste time attempting to unblock the many bilateral disputes that currently pepper the EU's diplomatic landscape.

One area where he appears to be more optimistic for a quick solution is the future status of Iceland which – depending on an upcoming parliamentary debate – may submit an application in the coming months to join the EU.

Sweden's European affairs minister and former MEP, Cecilia Malmstrom, speaking alongside her colleague, said she is under no illusion the next six months are going to be easy and that the presidency's main priorities will be to deal with negotiations in the lead up to the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December and the economic crisis.