Bulgaria will focus on three key areas of interaction in southeastern Europe during its current chairmanship of the regional cooperation initiative, the country’s Foreign Minister Daniel Mitov has said.

These areas are connectivity (transport, energy, and infrastructure); media freedom and freedom of expression; migration and coping with the refugee flow, Mitov said at the first informal meeting of the foreign ministers of the South-East European Cooperation Process (SEECP).

He expressed his concern over the massive refugee flow into the SEE region and said a joint coordination mechanism is urgently needed to be established to to fight illegal migration and human trafficking.

Mitov, who assumed the one-year rotating chairmanship of the SEECP on July 1, reiterated the initiative’s role as a leading political format in southeastern Europe – a factor for security, stability and prosperity.

The meeting, which was held on the sidelines of the annual session of the UN General Assembly in New York, was also attended by the Secretary General of the Regional Cooperation Council, Goran Svilanovic, and UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, the Foreign Ministry in Sofia said in a statement on Thursday.