South East Europe PTA's- Step Forward to EU or Not?

In many developing countries, regional integration has become a key means of promoting economic growth and fighting poverty. PTAs are increasingly used as engines of change in many developing countries, to promote, implement, and lock in reforms in a wide range of policy areas such as investment regimes, competition rules, and government procurement. They create larger and more competitive markets and benefit producers and consumers through economies of scale and lower prices. Although PTAs may promote development, they necessarily discriminate against nonmembers and can therefore lead to trade diversion in a way that hurts both member countries and excluded countries. Also, the proliferation of bilateral and regional PTAs may undermine progress toward a more open, transparent, and rules-based multilateral trading system. In this paper it will be discussed about the establishment and expectations of a free trade agreement CEFTA 2006. Specifically, the South East European countries, which made the majority of this regional economic integration, still have many unresolved, above all, political problems. On the other hand, the different status of these countries in the process of integration into the European Union chose the inflow of financial resources and speed necessary economic reforms. However, the global economic crisis has slowed the flow of financial resources, especially greenfield investments, deepened social stratification and mutual political differences between member states. This paper will try to answer the question: do this PTAs really contribute to deeper integration in EU?