The Role Of Euro Balkan Economic Collaboration In The Local Development Of Frontier Regions: Doubts And Delays In The Prefecture Of Florina

The EU assumed the major role in providing the funds, the technical support and the orientation of the foreign economic and political relations for the countries in transitional process. Therefore, a new network of intergovernmental cooperation relations was elaborated, given the fact that the Balkan countries concur almost exclusively with the EU (Euro-Balkan cooperation), and furthermore various agreements and cooperation initiatives were laid out. Since the implementation of the Euro-Balkan cooperation and regional policy agreements assumed already a time period of 15 years, we observe that the optimism raised originally for the development of marginalized EU borderline regions has nowadays attenuated. Furthermore this situation raised a serious issue/ question: in which extend are these regions - in crisis and reformation - actually converging. In 2005 a research regarding the inter-border prefecture of Florina was carried out in order to evaluate the contribution of the European programs in the actual development of inter-border cooperation. The evaluation of the implementation process for the Interreg III Project, which was considered to progress slowly, in correlation to the findings of the empiric research, demonstrated that, despite the European initiatives and funding, the danger of missing out the opportunity to egress from the isolation and to fail in a feasible interborder role, is always present.