ECOTA and ECO Vision 2015: Opportunities and Challenges for Economic Cooperation Organization(ECO)

Economic cooperation organization (ECO), in spite of its considerable capabilities, could not represent itself as a powerful regional organization in the global economic sphere yet. Thus ECO faced many criticisms by scholars in recent years. For its more adaptation with new transformations in the global economic spheres, promotion of economic cooperation among members and implementation of perceived aims and decreasing the pressures from its critiques, this organization approved ECO Trade Agreement entitled ECOTA in 2002 and document of ECO Vision 2015 in 2005. This article on the basis of these two transformations, and in order to understand the ECO contemporary situation better, concentrates on the most important opportunities and challenges facing ECO on the shadow of theories of functionalism and neo-functionalism, new regionalization and globalization and the theory of Cantori and Shpigel. At the end the article proposes some applied solutions and initiations for making new changes in ECO to achieve its ends.