This Chaillot Paper tries to provide a background against which both cooperation among the countries of the region and their integration in the EU, as major vectors of long-term stabilisation, can be better understood but also more effectively encouraged. Focusing on the forms of cooperation that exist in the region, and also on the different expectations among external actors encouraging and regional actors participating in this, it highlights the importance of successful future cooperation and integration in a region that has traditionally known little of either.