The visegrad group on the threshold of its third decade: A Central European hub?

Abstract

The Visegrad Group (also the Visegrad Four - V4) is a subregional group consisting of four Central European (CE) countries - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The V4 was established on 15 February 1991 when the Presidents of Czechoslovakia and Poland and the Prime Minister of Hungary met in Visegrad, Hungary.1 In February 2011, the Visegrad Group celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its existence. Looking at the recent scope and depth of its activities one has to admit that the V4 made the first step into its third decade as a self-confident and by far the most important subregional group in Central Europe even though the potential still exceeds the actual outcomes (CEPA 2011). The picture of the V4 has not always been so bright, however. Only eight years ago the V4 faced tough questions about its meaning; even its very survival was at stake. Thus, the main issues that this chapter seeks to address are the following: First, what were the conditions that had to be fulfilled for the Visegrad Group to become as ambitious and recognized as it is today? This question arises from the surprising ability of the V4 to overcome long and recurring phases of justified scepticism and concerns about the meaningfulness as well as the future of the group. In this chapter, six conditions that - from a contemporary point of view - were necessary for the V4 to withstand the challenges2 are defined. Second, the chapter aims at describing how the process of ‘becoming and stabilizing’ of the group affected the in-group feeling of the V4 members, and how this in-group feeling in turn affects the relations of the V4 to the other countries in the region.