The Southeast European Cooperative Initiative - SECI was launched in 1996 on an inaugural conference in Geneva on the basis of Points of Common EU-U.S. Understanding, as an alternative to the Dayton Agreement and an innovative strategy to help the South-east European region to come out of the crisis provoked by the collapse of the former Communist regimes and especially of the collapse of Yugoslavia. The SECI States held an inaugural meeting in Geneva on December 5-6, 1996 and formally adopted the SECI Statement of Purpose on December 6, 1996. On December 19, 1996, as authorized by the Participating States, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office (Swiss Federal Councilor Flavio Cotti), named Dr. Erhard Busek, former vice-chancellor of Austria, as SECI "High-Level Personality", hereinafter Coordinator.

SECI has not been conceived as an assistance programme, but rather as self-help programme. It aims at bringing various stakeholders together and thus facilitate cooperation, decision-making, concrete action and commitment to development processes and thereof regional ownership of the integration processes of the region.

The launching of SECI was supported by a close partnership with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN ECE)and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation for Europe (OSCE), who provided for the practical implementation of the SECI idea. Today, it relies on a dense network of affiliations and collaborators through which it further contributes to the regional efforts for sustainable development and integration and the bridging of remaining obstacles to cooperation and development in South East Europe.