Between Solidarity, Responsibility and Interests: Assistance Policies and Economic Ties

Abstract

This chapter details the ECE countries’ involvement in bilateral programmes and their participation in EU missions and assistance policy towards the Western Balkans and the Eastern neighbours. It also shortly investigates the ECE countries’ involvement in the field of economic issues. It gives an idea of the forms taken by political solidarity and moral responsibility through the definition of priority countries and the mobilisation of human, economic and financial resources to implement the related policies, and confronts them with the economic field, where the expression of more (socially constructed) interests is to be expected.