The International Center for Democratic Transition from Budapest, and the FORUM Center for Strategic Research and Documentation, Skopje were organizers of the advanced research workshop : “Bottom-up or top down: how to move Euro Atlantic integrations forward in the minds of the people in the Western Balkans?” which took place in Skopje, May 26-28, 2009.

Participants at this workshop coming from countries of Western Balkan, with different background: civil society, politics, media like former Macedonian Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski, former Hungarian Foreign Minister Geza Jeszensky, U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia Phillip T. Reeker, OSCE Head of Mission to Macedonia Jose Luis Herero, Sonja Liht from Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence, and others discussed very openly without political correctness a lot of issues related to the Euro Atlantic integration of the region.

The objective of the workshop was to examine the current perceptions on human security challenges in the region and devising ways to overcome them. The debate was focused in promoting regional civil society cooperation by examining ways to adopt successful institutional models.

During the three days workshop also were discussed how NATO and EU engagement policies in South East Europe can be synchronized with an aim to catalyze the stabilization and integration of the region and how the regional efforts can go in the same direction with these two.