Governance of Transport Corridors in OIC Member States:
Challenges, Cases and Policy Lessons
47
 Develop a rail freight corridor;
 Adopt Road Safety Inspection guidelines and training;
 Facilitation of trade and road border crossing;
 Developing framework for implementing intelligent transport system;
 Adopting maintenance plan 2019-2023;
 Transport network resilience;
 Bilateral agreements regarding rail border crossing.
All measurements are to be implemented regionally, except for the last. Bilateral agreements regarding
border crossing procedures for rail transport between Macedonia and Serbia, and between
Montenegro and Albania are in place, while agreements of other members are ongoing or in early
development stages. The SEETO secretariat uses the SEETO Soft Measures Monitoring mechanism, a
list of predefined criteria, to assess and compare progress made on soft infrastructure measures. The
degree to which each measurement is implemented in the member states varies by member and by
measure.
Mutual recognition of each other’s inspections, certificates, etc.
Various topics of the soft measures management plan relate specifically to the mutual recognition of
official documents issued by different countries.
3.2.4 Institutional framework
Organisation and characteristics
Currently, the following governance institutions as foreseen in the Memorandum of Understanding to
foster the development process of SEETO are in place:25
The Annual Meeting of Ministers (AMM) is the highest political forumwhere the progress of the corridor
in respect to the MoU is confirmed, Multi-Annual Plan is accepted and future strategies are agreed
upon. It is attended by the Ministers of Transport of each of the Regional Participants and by the
European Commission.
The Steering Committee (SC) ensures co-ordination of the joint work of Signatories of theMemorandum
of Understanding. It is composed by one representative and one deputy representative of each
Participant at Junior Ministers or senior civil servants’ level. It is co-chaired by a Chairman from the
South-East Europe region and the European Commission. The Steering Committee is the main
responsible structure for guiding SEETO’s activities and coordinating the transport infrastructure
planning, as well as promoting and conducting national reforms in line with the agreed EU and regional
driven approach.
The SEETO Secretariat provides technical support to the steering committee and facilitates the
coordination of the regional participants, EC and IFIs. It also liaises with other actors directly involved
in the implementation of the MoU, such as working groups and national co-ordinators, and with IFIs,
regional bodies and donors active in the region. The SEETO Secretariat analyses the performance of
the network, registering the progress made in the achievement of the MoU’s provisions, is responsible
for producing and updating the Indicative Extension of TEN-T Comprehensive Network to theWestern
Balkans’s Multi-Annual Plan and assists the steering committee in promoting policy reforms and
harmonisation in the transport sector.
25 This section is based on