Transport Cooperation across Borders: Towards Common Transport Policy in the Western Balkans

The implementation of infrastructure projects with cross-border significance, and pursuing a common transport policy in the Western Balkans which supports the regulatory and institutional reforms, have a substantial impact on the regional economies. They contribute to the opening of the regional markets and boosting the intraregional and international trade. For a region which suffered tremendously during the 1990’s and saw brutal abruption of the transport network across the region, leaving fragmented pieces of what used to be a nearly single transport system, the coordination of investments for large transport infrastructure projects and policies which facilitates such investments, is of utmost importance. The transport policy and investment coordination on regional level is conducted under the South East Europe Transport Observatory (SEETO), aiming to promote development of the multimodal SEETO Comprehensive Network, which now forms part of the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T Comprehensive Network). The paper will firstly focus on the general conditions of the Network and elaborate the methodology and coordination mechanisms for prioritization of regional-scale projects, the investments in which, have reached €10.8 billion in 2007-2011 period. Although significant progress of the network conditions is apparent, the investments needs of the regional transport network are still quite high: €8.6 billion. (source: SEETO). Parallel to the development of the Network, the countries from the region endeavor to carry out measures that transform and modernize their national transport system in line with the EU Transport Policy. The paper will look at these soft/horizontal measures that aim at alleviation of the regulatory and institutional deficiencies, thus bringing added value to the regional transport policy. Finally, the paper will recommend further incentives for transport collaboration across border and actions at regional level which are likely to have greater impact on the transport and border-crossing facilitation as well as enhancement of the transport services.