IBEU - «Functional Borders and Sustainable Security: Integrating the Balkans in the European Union». The project (contract no. HOSE-CT-2002-00131) was led by Heliamep (Athens) within the 5th Framework Research Program of the European Commission in the years 2003 and 2004.

S. Bianchini has been the Coordinator of the International Research Team on «Borders’ fragility and migrations within and from the Balkans», as a Working Group no. 5 of the 2-years project IBEU. The whole project was developed with the contribution of other partners in addition to Heliamep (Athens), as the following : London School of Economics; Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies; the Romanian Academic Society, Bucarest; the Center for liberal strategies and the Institute for Market Economics, Sofia; the Istituto per l'Europa Centro-Orientale e Balcanica, University of Bologna in Forlì. In particular, the International Research Team on Migration (or Working Group no. 5) had the task to investigate the impact of people displacements, internal and external to the Balkans, with a specific attention to Italy and Greece as neighboring countries of the area. Displacements were provoked by wars as much as by economic hardship, and have been one of the main features of the troubled post-communist transformation in the region. As a result, they are considered today one of the main obstacles to the stabilization of the region and ,accordingly, to its integration into the EU. Taking into consideration this context, the research has focussed on ethnic cleansing, political and economic failures in the Balkans, which drastically overthrew the previous geopolitical and demographic structure without creating stability. The research concluded by noting how the borders of nation-states are - since the 1990s - unequivocally under strain, experiencing in different ways the challenges of globalization. In the end, after meetings in Athens, Belgrade, Bertinoro and Brussels, a book has been published with Luisa Chiodi as editor, and with a preface by Stefano Bianchini. The title of book is “The Borders of the Polity. Migration and Security across the EU and the Balkans”, Longo, Ravenna, 2005. Written by a multinational team of senior and junior researchers, this book is a study of migrations and civil society across the Balkans and its EU neighbours. It focuses in particular on social organizations formed among refugees, displaced persons, and migrants that strive to emerge in the local and transnational public sphere. Their struggles for recognition, it is argued, display its fundamental role for democracy, both East and West. From different perspectives and in the various polities considered - Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, and Turkey - these innovative studies consider how, via people mobility, the intercultural relations of the Balkans meet the process of integration of the European Union.