The tenth summit ended with the admission of Montenegro as the 11th member of the SEECP, the adoption of a joint declaration and the amending of the SEECP Charter with decisions to establish a Regional Cooperation Council and a Council Secretariat-General.
The Secretary-General of the Regional Cooperation Council will be Croatian diplomat Hido Biscevic, whereas the Secretariat-General will have its headquarters in Sarajevo.
Biscevic said that in the next six months the Council would assume the best projects from the Stability Pact for Southeast Europe, which is expected to be dissolved in 2008.
The Croatian Prime Minister thanked German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn for attending the summit and thus expressing EU support for the efforts to stabilise Southeast Europe.
Sanader welcomed news from Belgrade of an agreement among democratic parties to form a new government. Stressing that Serbia deserved a European future, Sanader said there was no way that the idea of Serbian territorial expansion from the Milosevic era could be realised today.
Rehn cautiously remarked that it was too early to celebrate. We should wait and see what happens. We should knock on wood and hope that everything goes well, he added.
Rehn said that the news from Belgrade was good for the people of Serbia and the Balkans as a whole.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, whose country assumed the one-year presidency of the SEECP at the summit, presented the programme of the Bulgarian presidency, saying that its priorities would be promoting regional initiatives, developing private-public partnerships, building tourism infrastructure and combating organised and transborder crime.
The next SEECP summit takes place in Bulgaria in May 2008.