With Gazprom pulling out of Ukraine’s transit network of natural gas in 2019, South – Eastern Europe, a region with high import dependency on Russian gas, must prepare itself for a post- 2019 environment that could challenge the stability of the countries’ security of supply. This is particularly the case for Serbia which imports over 80% of its natural gas from Russia.

At the NATO Summit held in Prague in 2002, seven new members from the "Vilnius Group" have been welcomed into the Alliance membership - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovenia. The presidents of the remaining countries from this group - Stipe Mesić from Croatia, Alfred Moisiu from Albania and Boris Trajkovski from Macedonia, promoted the idea of starting a new mechanism for the cooperation among their countries ...