After the collapse of communism, the Balkan countries fell into a period of great instability. The European Union couldn’t help in preventing it but tried to be in the first line in the post-conflict period. Although the European Union offered a clear perspective of membership to the Western Balkan countries, it is evident that these countries are not advancing rapidly towards it. This paper will analyze the cases of two different regions and their integration process, the Central Europe and the Balkan countries. Regional cooperation was included as a main element in the Agreements that the EU would sign with these countries. In this paper, I will try to compare and explain the different results achieve from the EU in these two regions, although the paths were similar. The analysis will be based in both, theoretical and empirical approach. Firstly, the paper will review and discuss the main theories in regional integration applied to these two areas and then analyze the elements that didn’t permit to achieve the same results in Balkans as in CEE, although a similar approach was adopted (economic integration first, for political integration later). On the other hand, the paper will focus on the biggest paradox of this process, which is the fact that regional integration was not part of an integrated platform with political, social, and economic cooperation, but merely procedural and trade related. As related to this, the paper will argue about the lack of including free movement of citizens as a crucial factor in the Balkan case and important condition for all other strategies to work, determined the low success that the so-called regional approach had in the region. Furthermore, without the clear involvement of other political agreements, judicial and legislative cooperation, the project was destined to be a rather difficult process.
