Rebuilding Socio-Economic Cooperation in South East Europe and the Black Sea for Restarting European Integration

In our paper “Feraios Revised: Inter-Regional Trans-National Socioeconomic Cooperation in South and Eastern Europe”, published in International Relations and Diplomacy Journal (December 2014), we analyzed the prospects of an inter-regional cross-national cooperation (in economic, social and political patterns) in South and Eastern Europe through the structural reorganization of the existing institutions (local, national or cross-national) in the area and we expressed the need for the reintroduction of Rigas Feraios’ perspective of socioeconomic and ultimately of political integration in this region. The present paper is an attempt to explain the reasons why working on the regional socioeconomic cooperation and integration constitutes a necessary condition before going into a wider amalgamation. Contemporary systemic, global crisis brought out internal and transnational aberrations and the fact of the asymmetrical financial integration of the EU countries. The Union consists of a multilevel system were social conflicts, different rates of economic development and various demographic dynamics dominate. The increasing territorial inequalities in the enlarged Europe and the “suspended step” of a monetary unification might establish the need to revert to regional socioeconomic cooperation, on the basis of the existing cultural, economic and historical bonds, like those of South-East Europe and the Black Sea, for restarting European integration and succeed inter-union stability and prosperity.