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Dialogue Southeast Europe

Our Mission
Seven members of the FES Dialogue Southeast Europe project team pose for a formal group photo in front of white blinds. In the back row, from left to right, stand Selma Šehović, Saša Vasić, Ema-Džejna Smolo-Zukan, and Harun Cero. In the front row, seated at a wooden table from left to right, are Lejla Garaplija, Sarah Hees-Kalyani, and Jasmina Pirija.
Creator: FES / Admir Kuburović

Our Mission

After more than two decades of engagement in southeastern Europe, the FES recognizes that the challenges and problems still facing this region can best be resolved through a shared regional framework. Our commitment to advancing our core interests in democratic consolidation, social and economic justice and peace through regional cooperation, has since 2015 been strengthened by establishing an infrastructure to coordinate the FES' regional work out of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina: the Regional Dialogue Southeast Europe (Dialogue SOE).

To that end, Dialogue SOE provides analysis of shared challenges in the region and develops suitable regional programs and activities in cooperation with the respective FES offices. Our work is conducted in close cooperation with colleagues and partners across the region. Activities are jointly implemented and overseen by either an FES office or Dialogue SOE. Furthermore, we integrate our regional work into joint initiatives with our colleagues in Berlin and Brussels. We aim to inform and be informed by the efforts of both local and international organizations in order to further our work in southeastern Europe as effectively as possible.

Our regional initiatives are advanced through three broad working lines:

Our website provides information about individual projects within each of these working lines, past events, and future initiatives.

Our Areas of Work

Just Cry for Justice
Creator: We Cry for Justice by David Haigh - License: CC BY 2.0

Social Democratic Politics and Values

Dialogue SOE is committed to advancing social democratic policies and values in southeastern Europe. Our work in this field is based upon youth exchange and political academy programs.

Ne u EU - Enlargement Policy Trash
Creator: Nel Pavletić / License: Pixel Media d.o.o.

Social and Economic Justice

Substantive democratic governance practices are rooted in fair and equitable economic arrangements. Social justice, more broadly, is intrinsic to the regional agenda the FES advances through its respective offices and individual projects.

Progressive Peace Policy

Peace and stability initiatives represent a decades-long cornerstone of FES work in southeastern Europe. Recent events have only reaffirmed the centrality of southeast European stability within the broader continental security paradigm.

Socio-Ecological Transformation
Creator: Azra Kadic

Socio-Ecological Transformation in SEE

The FES Dialogue Southeast Europe aims to address social challenges in climate and energy policy in the region.

Latest Publications

  • Publication
  • Publication Political Trends & Dynamics

Political Trends and Dynamics: Security and Arms Control in SEE

Second edition of Political Trends and Dynamics for 2021 focuses on security politics in the Western Balkans, against the backdrop of arms trafficking and recent security developments. Two decades after the wars of the 1990s, there seem...

  • Publication
  • Socio-ecological transformation in SEE
  • Publication Socio-ecological transformation in SEE
  • EPP TU Related Work

Legislative Framework of the Electricity Sector in the Republic of North Macedonia and its International Standing

The energy transition in North Macedonia must inevitably follow the path of the EU’s Clean Energy for all Europeans package.On this path, it is our responsibility to respect the techno-economic specificities of existing energy systems...

  • Publication
  • Social Democratic Politics and Values
  • Publication Political Trends & Dynamics
  • Publication Socio-ecological transformation in SEE
  • EPP TU Related Work

Political Trends & Dynamics: Women Leaders in Energy Transition

Marking International Women's History Month, Political Trends and Dynamics newsletter brings to the fore the phenomenon of women as emerging leaders in the regional sustainable energy sector. While Southeast Europe largely remains...

  • Publication
  • Publication Social Democratic Politics and Values

Democracy and the State of Emergency: Functioning of Institutions in times of Crisis

The current covid-19 pandemic, as ‘an hour of the executive’, offers an unprecedented opportunity to elected incumbents for a power grab and erosion of checks and balances. We have been witnessing a curtailing of civil and political...

  • Publication
  • Publication Social Democratic Politics and Values

Party Politics and the State of Emergency

The Coronavirus crisis has laid bare both the strengths as well as the weaknesses of political systems, democratic institutions and the political parties throughout the region, mirroring the real state of democracy on the ground. The...

  • Publication
  • Publication Social Democratic Politics and Values

Foreign Policy Making in Southeast Europe in Times of the Pandemic

A snapshot of relations among neighbours over the course of nine months shows that vulnerability caused by COVID-19 has not been exploited against neighbours. It also, however, has not engendered significant solidarity, except in cases...

  • Publication
  • Publication Social Democratic Politics and Values

(Unheard) Calls for Democracy from Bellow: Social and Protest Movements and Potentials for Democratic Renewal

Activism in Southeast Europe takes a unique path, that is not an imitation of the Western patterns of activism. Moreover, local contexts in a specific way encourage the expression of activism in the community, providing truly innovative...

  • Publication
  • Publication Social Democratic Politics and Values

Education and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe: Problems and Challenges

In the long run, an education approach based more on how than about what to learn would help enable the students to critically approach their own in group wrong doings and historical delusions and build critical thinking about the past. ...

  • Publication
  • Publication Political Trends & Dynamics

Political Trends & Dynamics: Challenges to the Rule of Law in the Western Balkans

Our last issue in 2020 introduces this topic, in the context of the Western Balkans and the EU's attempts to encourage substantive reforms in the region's judicial and law enforcement communities. With contributions from Nedim Hogić and...

  • Publication

Socijalna Dimenzija Procesa Pristupanja Srbije Europskoj Uniji

Ključni zakoni i mere donose se bez neophodnih konsultacija sa socijalnim partnerima, a u planu je donošenje novog zakona o radu, zakona o štrajku, zakona o socijalnoj zaštiti. Siromaštvo i brojne posledice siromaštva glavni su problem...