This article investigates whether the Visegrád Group (VG) is proving capable of a successful transition from preaccession to postaccession cooperation in the expanded European Union (EU). Prior to EU accession, the VG agenda mainly emphasised political cooperation around strategic goals of EU and NATO membership, acting as an incubation chamber and the organising framework for joint policies and actions. The article finds that pessimistic prognoses for postaccession VG cooperation in circulation around the time of EU entry rather underestimated the VG's staying power and its usefulness as a vehicle for serving some of the requirements and challenges of the actuality of the “return to Europe.” The postaccession agenda seems to have opened up many new avenues for cooperation on both intra-VG and external affairs, including towards the EU, and seems to have given rise to the kind of substantial practical cooperation agenda that eluded the VG during the preaccession period.
Report of the Czech Presidency of the Visegrád Group, June to May 2004. Henceforth abbreviated to "Czech VG Presidency Report 2004."http://www.visegradgroup.org .
2.
Renata Dwan, "Subregional, Regional and Global Levels: Making the Connections," In G. Herolf, ed., Subregional Cooperation and Integration in Europe (Stockholm: Utrikespolitiska Institutet, 2000), 81-100, 81.
3.
Anders Bjurner, "European Security at the End of the Twentieth Century: The Subregional Contribution," In Andrew Cottey, ed., Subregional Cooperation in the New Europe ( Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 1999 ), 8-20, 8.
4.
See especially A. Cottey, ed., Subregional Cooperation in the New Europe (Basingstoke , U.K.: Macmillan, 2000).
5.
Martin Dangerfield , "Regional Cooperation in the Western Balkans: Stabilisation Device or Integration Policy?" Perspectives on European Politics and Society5:2(2004): 243-72.
6.
Andras Inotai, "Correlations between European Integration and Sub-Regional Cooperation: Theoretical Background, Experience and Policy Impacts" (Working Paper No. 87 of the Institute for World Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 1997).
7.
The Nordic Council is another case of a pioneer group. For example, since 1954 Nordic citizens have had the right to travel between Nordic countries without passports and also the right to reside in other Nordic countries without permits.
8.
It is important to note that although the complement/preaccession instrument and the substitute types of regional cooperation can be distinguished in terms of intent, where economic integration has been the main focus of activity, there has been a commonality in terms of the form of integration developed and limits that apply. The usual pattern has been the formation of a free trade area, and although there is potential for intensification into a single market as the example of those countries that opted for the EEA shows, the essential point is that the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), the Baltic Free Trade Agreement (BFTA), the European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA), and the European Economic Area (EEA) are all what Inotai calls follower groups (Inotai, "Correlations Between European Integration and Sub-Regional Cooperation," 66). This means that the level of mutual integration is equivalent to, though does not exceed, what they already have in place with the EU and therefore integration with the EU has been the driver of the content of these regional integration exercises one way or another.
9.
In the case of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, the development of an involuntary alternative/substitution subregional cooperation project presupposes the emergence of some genuine attempts at economic integration or other substantial forms of multilateral cooperation. Also, the December 2004 electoral triumph of President Victor Yushchenko in Ukraine, together with the new dynamics on the EU eastern policy that the May 2004 enlargement has imparted, opened up the debate on Ukraine's EU membership prospects despite the apparent limitations (see below) of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).
10.
Apart from the membership perspective already offered by the EU and the relatively advanced positions of Croatia and Macedonia, the "Wider Europe/New Neighbourhood" concept proposed by the European Commission in March 2003 and accepted by the June EU Thessaloniki summit, is instructive here in that the most obvious negative interpretation of this initiative is that a key purpose of it is to identify those European countries whose relations with the EU are going to fall short of full membership, even in the longer term. The "Wider Europe" does not "therefore apply to the Union's relations with the remaining candidate countries-Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria-or the Western Balkans" (European Commission 2003, Com 2003, 104 Final, Brussels, 11 March. http://europa .eu.int/comm/external_relations/we/doc/com03_104_en.pdf, 4). On the other hand, the likely hurdle of EU member state referenda on Turkish accession, as on the agenda in France, for example, means that Turkey's status is not so clear-cut, of course. Furthermore, even the assumption about inevitable Western Balkan entry to the EU may not be watertight. Deteriorating support for EU membership in West Balkan countries was becoming more and more evident in 2005, even in Croatia where "the EU increasingly came to be seen as a bully because of the Gotovina affair, which resulted in a decline of popular support for EU membership. By late August, only 39 per cent of Croats were in favour of joining the bloc" (Patrick Moore, "End Note: Is There Life outside the EU for Western Balkans?" RFE/RL Newsline, Part II, 9:176, 16 September 2005). It will be interesting to see whether the EU's October 2005 decision to open at last Croatia's membership negotiations will revive popular support in Croatia.
11.
See Dangerfield (2002, see note 32, "Subregional Cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe") for a detailed analysis of the varied roles of subregional groupings in post-cold war Europe.
12.
CEFTA has generated useful political by-products, however, which were especially valuable during the "dormant" (1993-98) period of the Visegrád Group (VG). See below for further discussion of political dimensions of CEFTA cooperation.
13.
The Central European Initiative's (CEI) much looser links to the EU integration process have not featured direct preaccession activity. CEI's role has been more one of contributing to the baseline "Europeanisation" activities laying the foundations for integration proper, and CEI has also followed the principle that the benefits of the cooperation should mainly accrue to those states lagging behind in the twin processes of post-communist transformation and integration with the EU. A key mission of the CEI has been to help prevent new dividing lines emerging in Europe as a result of EU and NATO enlargement processes.
14.
Andrew Cottey , "The Visegrád Group," In Andrew Cottey, ed., Subregional Cooperation in the New Europe (Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 1999), 69-89, 70.
15.
Declaration on Cooperation between Czech and Slovak Federal, the Republic of Poland, and the Republic of Hungary in striving for European Integration, Krakow, 15 February 1991. Henceforth abbreviated to "VG declaration 1991." http://www.visegrádgroup.org.
16.
Not forgetting the important role of dissident-intellectual networks during the late communist era that translated into political cooperation in the post-1990 regimes in which many of these former dissidents held office.
17.
Dwan, " Subregional, Regional and Global Levels: Making the Connections," 82.
18.
Milada Anna Vachudova, "The Visegrád Four: No Alternative to Cooperation?" RFE/RL Research Report, 2:34(27 August 1993): 38-47.
19.
See, for example, Rick Fawn, "The Elusive Defined? Visegrád Co-operation as the Contemporary Contours of Central Europe," Geopolitics , 6:1( 2001): 47-68.
20.
Declaration of prime ministers of the Czech Republic, the Republic of Hungary, the Republic of Hungary, the Republic of Poland, and the Slovak Republic on cooperation of VG countries after their accession to the European Union, Prague, 12 May 2004, 1. Henceforth abbreviated to "VG Declaration 2004." http://www.visegrádgroup.org.
21.
Adrian Hyde-Price, European Security beyond the Cold War (London: Sage/RIIA , 1991), ix.
22.
Urban Rusnak , "One Year Experience of the International Visegrád Fund Activities," Central European Political Science Review , 2:5( 2001): 244-51.
23.
Cottey, "The Visegrád Group ," 75.
24.
Cottey, "The Visegrád Group ," 74.
25.
Cottey, "The Visegrád Group ," 77.
26.
Fawn, "The Elusive Defined? " 54.
27.
Vachudova, "The Visegrád Four," 39.
28.
Pavol Lukáč , "Regional Co-operation in Central Europe at the Beginning of the 21st Century-New Forms and New Challenges," in Yearbook of Foreign Policy of the Slovak Republic (Bratislava: Slovak Institute for International Studies, 2002). The fact that it was necessary to anchor Slovak-Hungarian relations in an EU-sponsored bilateral treaty showed the limits of the VG as a security community incubator.
29.
Milada Anna Vachudova, "The Division of Central Europe," The New Presence (Autumn 2001), 12-14, 12.
30.
Cottey, "The Visegrád Group ," 78.
31.
Slovenia became a CEFTA member on 1 January 1996.
32.
Martin Dangerfield, "Subregional Cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe: Support or Substitute for the `Return to Europe?'" In Cameron Ross, ed., Perspectives on the Enlargement of the European Union (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2002): 95-118, 106.
33.
See Cottey, "The Visegrád Group," for further details of ongoing bilateral cooperation during the VG's inactive phase.
34.
Prague Post, 7 June 1995. http://www.praguepost.com .
35.
Jiři Pehe, "Post-Zieleniec Policies Offer Hope for Change," Prague Post, 12 November 1997. http://www.praguepost.com .
36.
Matthew Rhodes , "Post-Visegrád Cooperation in East-Central Europe ," East European Quarterly23:1(1999): 51-67, 59.
37.
By 1998 Romania had joined CEFTA, and Bulgaria was on the verge of doing so. Along with Slovakia, both of them had been excluded from the first group of post-communist countries to open EU accession negotiations in 1998.
38.
Fawn, "The Elusive Defined? " 62.
39.
For obvious reasons it is not possible to go into detailed description of the cooperative activities, meetings, sessions, and so on, but interested readers can easily access more detail by consulting any of the recent VG presiding countries' annual reports via http://www.visegradgroup.org.
40.
See Contents of Visegrád cooperation as approved by the prime ministers summit in Bratislava, 14 May 1999. Henceforth abbreviated to "Contents of Visegrád cooperation 1999." A budget of 240,000 Euros exists for joint promotion of the Visegrád territory as a distinct tourist area. Marketing activities include joint presentations at overseas tourism fairs in the main target markets-currently the United States, Japan, China, Brazil, and India.
41.
The annual VG work plan sets the agenda for the year ahead and plans the schedule for VG ministerial meetings and expert consultations.
42.
Early projects included, for example, "International Film Festival for Children and Youth," "Seminar of the Multiregional International Business Program-Central and Eastern European Countries," "Improvement of Biomedical Engineering in V4 Countries," and "The Conference of Visegrád Youth." Scholarships to cover the cost of intra-VG student mobility were introduced in 2003.
43.
David Vaughan , "Central European Cooperation Goes into a New Gear," Radio Prague (8 August 2000). http://www.radio.cz/en/article/101698, 1.
44.
Patrycia Bukalska , "A New Visegrád Group in the European Union-Possibilities and Opportunities for Development," Centre for Eastern Studies Policy Briefs (June 2003), 3.
45.
Rusnak, " One Year Experience of the International Visegrád Fund Activities," 249.
46.
The annual budget was increased to 3 million Euros at the suggestion of the 2003/4 Czech VG presidency. Each VG member contributes750,000 Euros.
47.
The V4 each take turns to hold the rotating annual presidency of the VG that runs from June to May. The current presidency (2005-6) is held by Hungary.
48.
Financial Times, 23-24 February 2002.
49.
Lukáč, "Regional Co-operation in Central Europe," 72.
50.
Rob Cameron , "Visegrád PMs Meet in Czech Republic Ahead of Crucial IGC Meeting in Rome," Radio Prague, 1 October 2003 , 1. http://www.radio.cz/en/article/45821.
51.
Piotr Koslewski and Pawel Krzeczunowicz, eds., Poland's foreign Policy: Continuation or a Break with the Past? (Warsaw : Stefan Batory Foundation, 2004 ), 21. Lack of VG consensus was also evident on the question of whether the Constitution preamble should include reference to Christianity, again with Polish preferences not getting VG back up, and also on the question of minority issues as per Hungarian views.
52.
Koslewski and Pawel Krzeczunowicz, Poland's Foreign Policy, 21.
53.
Vachudova, "The Division of Central Europe," 12.
54.
Vachudova, "The Division of Central Europe," 14.
55.
Poland's engagement in Iraq and taking of the lead in the EU's mediation in the Ukrainian 2004 presidential election crisis would be seen as evidence of these "cosmopolitan" tendencies.
56.
Vachudova, "The Division of Central Europe," 14.
57.
A long-standing suspicion has been that Polish motives toward subregional cooperation initiatives in central Europe have mainly been less to do with ideas about the intrinsic value of such cooperation and more about using subregional groupings as instruments to "amplify" Poland's voice and influence abroad.
58.
Jiři Pehe, "Is the End of Visegrád in the offing?" 18 February 2004. http://www.pehe.cz/Clanky/2004/02-18-visegrad.htm .
59.
David Kral, Profile of the Visegrád Countries in the Future of Europe Debate ( Prague: EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy, September, 2003), 2. http://www.europactiv.com?Article?tcmuri=tcm:29-117205-16&type=Analysis .
60.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, "Government Information on the Polish Foreign Policy in the Year 2004 Presented at the Session of the Sejm on 21 January 2004 by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz" (2004), 21. http://www.msz.gov.pl/Government,information,on,the,Polish,foreign,policy,in,the,year,2004,presented,at,the,session,of,the,Sejm,on,,January,21,,2004,by,the,Minister,of,Foreign,Affairs,of,the,Republic,of,Poland,,Wlodzimierz,Cimoszewicz.,2140.html
61.
2004 VG Declaration, 1.
62.
Full details of the dimensions of VG cooperation as set out in the May 2004 VG Declaration are available at http://www.visegradgroup.org.
63.
Jiři Vykoukal, "The End of Visegrád Cooperation, or `Don't Kill the Messenger,"' Visegrad.info , 27 March 2004, 2. http://www.visegrad.info/index.php?ID=nazor&IDt=12 .
64.
The Economist, 16 April 2005.
65.
Radio Prague, 3 March 2004.
66.
Joint Declaration of the prime ministers of the V4 countries on the EU, Kazimierz Dolny, 10 June 2005, 1. Henceforth abbreviated to "VG Joint Declaration June 2005." Available at http://www.visegrádgroup.org.
67.
For example, Kral, Profile of the Visegrád Countries in the Future of Europe Debate, and Bukalska, "A New Visegrád Group in the European Union."
68.
VG Declaration2004, 3.
69.
Declaration of Visegrád Ministers of the Interior, 19 July 2004, 1. Henceforth abbreviated to "VG Interior Ministers' Declaration 2004." Available at http://www.visegrádgroup.org.
70.
Schengen issues are one of many areas of cooperation between the VG and the Benelux Group, including the transfer of experience and know-how from the latter to the former. For details, see "Fields of cooperation between the Visegrád countries and the Benelux (List of decisions for the meeting in Bratislava on the 15-16 February 2005)".
71.
VG Interior Ministers' Declaration 2004, 1. The joint submission commitment is subject to certain conditions-for details of them, see VG Interior Ministers' Declaration, 2004.
72.
Hana Daňková , "Regional cooperation in the European Union-Benelux and Visegrád," VISEGRÁD.info, 2003. http://www.visegrad.info/tisk.php?tabulka=clanek&ID=30.
73.
Use of the V4 cooperation structures to formulate policy inputs to the intra-EU debates on Eastern policy has included not only regular consultations between foreign ministers and other foreign ministry officials but also major V4 seminars on this topic (e.g., in Bratislava in November 2004) involving experts from the major foreign policy research institutes/think tanks. On the International Visegrád Fund (IVF), the internal sphere of VG cooperation should be consolidated by the 2003/4 Czech Presidency's instigation of discussions and proposals to adapt and upgrade the IVF to the new conditions of EU membership which will make access to EU funds to support and extend the scale of IVF projects more possible and extend IVF projects more into cross-border cooperation between the V4 and East and South East European neighbours. For example modest contributions to development of relations with countries in the EU's new border zone are being made by the fact that VG scholarships are now available to incoming students from South East and Eastern European countries including Belarus and Ukraine.
74.
Grzegorz Gromadzki, Oleksandr Sushko, Marius Vahl, Kataryna Wolczuk, Roman Wolczuk , eds., More Than Neighbours: The Enlarged European Union and the Ukraine (Warsaw: Stefan Batory Foundation , 2004), 16.
75.
Joint Declaration of the Prime Ministers of the V4 Countries on the Ukraine, Kazimierz Dolny, June 10, 2005, 1. Henceforth abbreviated to "VG Joint Declaration Ukraine 2005." http://www.visegrádgroup.org.
76.
This lobbying activity has been via the auspices of the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the European Union (CIAA). I am grateful to Lladislav Cervenka, vice president of the Federation of the Food and Drink Industries of the Czech republic, for advising me of this.
77.
Mateusz Falkowski , Patrycia Bukalska, Grzegorz Gromadski, "Yes to Visegrád ," Analyses and Opinion, 16 (November 2003): 2.
78.
VG Declaration2004, 7.
79.
The Nordic Council also includes some non-EU members, for example, Iceland, Norway, and Greenland.
80.
Financial Times, 16 February 2005.
81.
Financial Times, 13 January 2005.
82.
Financial Times, 14 February 2005.
83.
Martin Brusis , ", Prospects of Visegrád Cooperation in an Enlarged European Union," in Marek. Št'astny, ed.Visegrád Countries in an Enlarged Trans-Atlantic Community (Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 2002): 67-84, 67.
84.
Financial Times, 19 December 2005.
85.
Although some VG members-Hungary most notably in the post-1999 period-have been ardently more anti-institutionalist than others, the author conducted interviews with several of the national VG coordinators in the course of this research, and this was the basic message coming from of all of them.
86.
With the exception of the CEI, which has a secretariat in Trieste financed by the Italian government.
87.
Bukalska, " A New Visegrád Group in the European Union-Possibilities and Opportunities for Development," 18.
88.
Jaromír Plíšek , "Visegrád has passed the test, and it has a future," Visegrad.info, 21 October 2004. http://www.visegrad.info/index.php?ID=nazor&IDt=30, 1.
