The demand for inter-Balkan cooperation

From the end of the 1920s Greek foreign policy evolved in two separate but complementary levels:

a. in the Balkan region, the endeavours for the establishment of a system of cooperation amongst the Balkan states placed Greece at the centre of the efforts for the shaping of an inter-Balkan system of collective security, which was regarded as a viable solution to the gradual destabilisation of the European system in the 1930s. The demand for a wider system of international cooperation had been adopted by four Balkan governments (of Greece, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Rumania), led to a series of agreements and had been sealed with the Balkan Treaty (1934).

b. especially after 1933, Greece attempted to follow a policy of equidistance, avoiding any action which would violate her position with regard to the two emerging European blocs of states (Italy-Germany, on the one hand; Britain-France, on the other). In the context of a cautious foreign policy, Greece maintained friendly relations and a satisfactory level of cooperation with the two fascist regimes, but at the same time the Greek governments established a pattern of cooperation with Britain, thus acknowledging the latter's vital interests in eastern Mediterranean.