Jadranka Joksimovic
COHERENCE, CONVERGENCE, COHESION
The undertaken relational analysis of the core concepts underpinning the practical roadmap for the process of systemic establishment of regional sustainable development policy and coordinated use of structural instruments starts from the assumption that the negotiated accession process of the Republic of Serbia to the European Union encourages sustainable transformation of the entire of Serbia and all its parts. The systemic overhaul of the existing national regional development policy is required in order to institute an overarching cross-sectoral and horizontal regional sustainable development policy in accordance with the negotiating chapter 22 Regional policy and coordination of structural instruments in the negotiations on membership with the European Union. The aim of the relational analysis of the core concepts is to highlight how the coordinates of the EU accession regime provide a clear practical roadmap for the process of establishing a systemically convergent overarching coherent cross-sectoral and horizontal regional sustainable development policy for seamless integration with the EU Cohesion Policy, often referred to as Regional Policy. The theoretical-methodological approach of inter-layer, intra-layer, intra-systemic and inter-systemic negotiation-making processes of multi-level governance was applied on the entanglement of core transformational concepts of convergence, coherence, cohesion and sustainable development to depict the practical roadmap for the process of systemic establishment of regional sustainable development policy in the Republic of Serbia for seamless integration with the EU Cohesion Policy. Thus obtained evidence is clarified and explained, underling that development potential and mechanisms of financial instruments for sustainable development are already available to candidate countries for the systemic establishment of changes in norms, policies, practices and relations necessary for membership in the European Union, although remaining only neglected and even overlooked, or completely misconstrued in public discourse. This significantly affects the volatility of the general public's support for the European integration process. To counter trend this upside in the ongoing process of negotiating accession to the European Union the practical road map for the process of establishing in the Republic of Serbia a systemically convergent overarching coherent cross-sectoral and horizontal regional sustainable development policy for seamless integration with the EU Cohesion Policy is provided as the result of the thorough relational analysis. Therefore, the crucially important understanding that the negotiations within Chapter 22 directly mean the preparation of the country to use grants, both during the candidate status and after the accession to the EU is strongly pointed out. Also, this fact is most easily substantiated by the examples of countries that negotiated their membership earlier, how a coherent regional sustainable development policy established in a timely and systematically convergent and coherent manner is the most effective model for achieving sustainable development of all regions within one country.
