In Bulgaria and Romania, where democratically elected administrations are in the hands of well-meaning politicians, there is a huge lack of expertise.

Even if one ignores the faintly ridiculous sight of the European Commission proposing to train Balkan administrations in how to eliminate waste and corruption, one conclusion is inescapable: the effort will take years and will have to be undertaken often against the wishes of the local leaders.

Who will pay?

Finally, there is the question of the resources available.

The original Marshal Plan was launched at a time of an ideological confrontation with the Soviet Union. Discussions about sharing the burden for this effort with Europe were meaningless; the US effectively pledged to spend whatever it took in order to make sure that communism did not spread further West.

Serbia's Zastava car plant has been hit

This ideological fervour clearly does not apply to the Balkans. Indeed, Congressmen in Washington have served notice on the Europeans that they do not propose to authorise reconstruction funds after the Kosovo war is over.

Europe is wealthy enough to sustain this effort; the question is whether it has the political courage to persuade public opinion that grants to, say, Andalucia in Spain, should be diverted to Arad in Romania.

Regional suspicions

Both the EU and Nato are suggesting that, while plans are put together for the area, the Balkan states should be encouraged to co-operate with each other.

Most would prefer integration with the EU to closer regional ties

Such co-operation is logical, and should not come at the expense of a wider European integration. Correct, but only up to a point.

A great deal is already being done, and many of these activities do not require government co-ordination. Greek investors dominate markets in Serbia and Macedonia, and the remittances of Albanian workers in Greece are just about the only source of foreign revenue in Albania itself.

Turkish construction and transport firms, as well as Turkish bakeries, predominate in Romania. More attuned to local markets and willing to take greater risks, such investors will clearly remain in a better position to exploit regional opportunities.

But there are also great limitations on how far this process can go. All the region's states suffer from similar problems: relatively large agricultural sectors, redundant industrial capacity, a surplus of labour and a decaying infrastructure.

Not only do they have little to offer each other, but they actually compete with each other for the same Western capital resources.

Secondly, Greece will always be in a different position from the rest of the region: as a EU member, it is bound by certain tariff restrictions and trade practices which do not apply to others.

Furthermore, if the West as a whole proved unable to solve the Greek-Turkish dispute, the Balkan states cannot be expected to do better.

Very often, their solution is to carefully skirt around the dispute altogether, in the hope of avoiding any new tensions.

And, ultimately, the obstacle to regional co-operation is psychological: although everyone assures the Balkan states that they have nothing to fear, the area's leaders instinctively regard regional co-operation as inferior to European integration and suspect that, the more they succeed in co-operating regionally, the less they will be considered as serious candidates in either the EU or Nato.

'War of European integration'

And this is where a transformation needs to take place in Western thinking.

For over a century the Balkans were considered partly a geographic area, and partly a disease which needs to be quarantined.

Romania fought hard to be admitted as a Nato member, but its application was ultimately turned down, in favour of Central European countries which were less in need of this security reassurance.

The EU is expanding but, yet again, not to the Balkans. Unless there is a realisation that Europe will not be peaceful without fully integrating the Balkans into its institutions most of the regional reconstruction projects will fail.

The real Marshal Plan, therefore, has to be for Western Europe's minds and hearts.

If this is successful, the Kosovo disaster will go down in history as the last war of European integration. And that, surely, is an aim worth both fighting and paying for.