Regional Cooperation Council

Infrastructure and Energy

As the entity responsible for promoting, coordinating and monitoring regional cooperation processes in South East Europe, the RCC will particularly focus on energy and infrastructure, as the most important prerequisites for the overall economic, social and environmental development, stability and prosperity of the region.

The RCC will monitor Energy Community development and politically support overcoming of bottlenecks in its implementation. It will also promote the sustainable energy development in the region. Transfer of knowledge from EU member States on the sustainable energy projects preparation, development, financing scheme and implementation will be crucial for the success of this initiative.

Due attention will be paid to support South East Europe Transport Observatory Permanent Secretariat in the foreseen process of negotiation and execution of a Treaty establishing the Transport Community based on the existing Memorandum of Understanding on the Development of the South East Europe Core Regional Transport Network. The RCC will contribute to and monitor creating and implementing the South East European Railway Transport Area based on the recently signed Addendum to the mentioned Memorandum.

Promoting regional initiatives to the business community will be of particular significance taking into account that the region is facing an important investment challenge to improve the energy and transport infrastructure. The RCC will encourage the regional countries in coordinating their efforts to better use available support for regional cooperation processes, primarily the multi-beneficiary programme in the EC Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance.

Participation in the International Financial Institutions (IFI) Advisory Group and its technical working groups will enable the RCC to serve as an interface between policy-makers, the IFIs, business community and social partners, as well as an instrument for information exchange for both the South East Europe countries and the IFIs. The RCC will play an important role in the process of identification of projects eligible for the Infrastructure Projects Facility support, launched by the EC Directorate General for Enlargement, and its subsequent implementation. The identification will primarily be based on Trans European Networks (TEN) criteria, economic and environmental viability and the completed as well as ongoing and planned regional studies.

The success of the reforms will highly depend on the comprehensive support and general acceptance. The RCC will thus foster the dialogue with social partners and civil society actors and facilitate the adoption of social action plans linked to infrastructure restructuring and its products and services affordability.

Due to huge potentials of Danube and Sava rivers, largely unused, the RCC will provide support to the Danube Cooperation Process and the International Sava River Basin Commission.

Taking into account that energy and transport sectors are major pollutants as regards local, trans-boundary and global pollution, the RCC will provide relevant inputs and cooperate with the Regional Environmental Centre and the Regional Environment Reconstruction Programme Secretariat.