a. The international community has worked out and plans to carry out a number of interventions, aiming at peace establishment as well as integration of the area in European organizations and cooperation councils. This is due to the situation prevailing in the Balkans during the last decade, which results in well-known problems for the security, stabilization and development of the area, as mentioned before.

b. These interventions cover a broad spectrum, starting from the provision of good services, facilitating negotiations and acting as mediators. Then they go on with providing economic assistance, monitoring elections, as well as monitoring, with provision, transportation and distribution of humanitarian aid, observers and international police deployment. They end up to the conduct of Peacekeeping Operations such as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo and FYROM.

c. Because of the nature and the scope of the above interventions, some are related to activities in the political, diplomatic and economic fields, whereas others include military forces activities. In turn, they range from merely preventive deployment of forces, to the conduct of Peacekeeping Operations, in compliance with the United Nations Chart, and other operations, known as Reaction Operations or Crisis Response Operations.

d. NATO was very active in this field, having developed an appropriate doctrine, improving continuously its organization. A relative doctrine has also been developed by the European Union, in the frame of development of the European Defense and Security Identity. Thus, the EU could undertake relevant operations in the future, either with its own means or through NATO.

e. To this end, the Multinational SE Europe Brigade was established, with the participation of seven states as full members (Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, FYROM, Romania and Turkey), and three nations as observers (USA, Croatia, Slovenia).