SARI is a program agreed upon by the South Asian States and continued from 2006 to date. The process was funded by the European Commission and supported by Aircraft Industry and was formally included in the EU-SA Aviation Partnership Project in 2017. It focuses on regional regulatory harmonization using EU (EASA) regulations as a reference. One of the core actions of the current EU-SA APP II it to continue the support of the South Asia Regional Initiative (SARI) as a natural continuation of the efforts devoted in the former project. SARI has embarked on the progressive implementation of airworthiness regulations and is now progressively expanding to cover flight operation and flight crew licensing regulations and other potential domains such as aerodromes and air navigation at a later stage.

After an interruption caused by the pandemic and lack of funding in between the project phases, the SARI activities were recommenced in 2022, and the initiative is, at the moment, fully operational.

​​