Visegrad Group

The relevance of individual Visegrad countries in Beijing’s foreign policy shows significant stereotype: they are traditionally viewed as small countries. This opinion did not vanish despite the declarative importance of 16+1 relations and the V4-China cooperative formats on the side of China. Even though the V4 countries show the high potential for trade and investments among the 16 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, there has been a minimal annual increase of the economic statistics since 2011/2012. At the same time the Balkan states have received more tangible political attention of Beijing, as could be seen for example by prioritizing them as the hosts of annual 16+1 summits (2013 in Bucharest and 2014 in Belgrade), and declaring strategic partnerships (Serbia and Albania). The common knowledge of the CEE in China has been so far minimal and originated from the context of Russian and East European studies, which does not entirely fit the present realities of these countries. This is even more truth for the Central Europe, which tend to perceive itself historically and culturally as a specific region between Western and Eastern European tradition. This might explain the so far limited range of Chinese middle and large scale investment projects in the V4 states that noticeably lag behind the Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese investments, which received basic political backing, but never attached to superfluous political and bureaucratic agendas. On the other hand, trading Chinese goods and trade inflows into V4 confirms the advanced level of market liberalization, as the result of their generally liberal trade policies achieved after the transformation and reforms in the 1990s and early 2000s. There is therefore a remaining great challenge for V4 states’ diplomacies to attract Chinese public from the predominantly pragmatic and economy focused attention, and increase the Chinese understanding of CEE cultural and historical identity and relevance. In political and economic agenda, the V4 group is potentially the one of possible regional groups which may be interested to set their agendas into closer coordinated strategy in 16+1, respectively in 4+12+1 format. This chapter is discussing political relations of four Visegrad states with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and explores the impact of the so-called “Warsaw initiative” on their recent development. Did the diplomatic effort of the two most ambitious states Poland and Hungary push forward the relations with China, or was the dynamic influenced mostly by the establishing of 16+1 format and the leading role of Beijing? How far the V4 states benefit from the format of 16+1, and what the V4 are supposed to do to increase their image in the eyes of Beijing? Should the V4 group consider any effort at closer coordination of individual bilateral policies of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia? To present the answers to these questions, this chapter will start with a short summary of the recent development of political relations between the V4 countries and China, especially since the summits in Budapest in 2011 and in Warsaw in 2012. It will be claimed that it is China who is the driving force of the 16+1 project and the V4-China relations and therefore to understand the dynamics and possible future paths it is imperative to recognise Chinese intentions vis-à-vis the V4 countries. It should be admitted that intentions and goals of countries in foreign affairs cannot be scientifically proved and it is even more the case of China due to still very much hidden nature of its political system. Therefore, we will interpret Chinese intentions in the V4/CEE16 based on its behaviour and the general foreign policy interests. Two alternative theories explaining Chinese approach in the V4 regions will be presented. First one is based on the assertion that it is foremost economics which motivates China to build relations with the V4 countries, therefore the political relations serve as the facilitator for the business interests. Second works with a seemingly countering rational and it claims that it is the long term strategic goal of China to develop stable relations with the countries in the region and the economics serve as a means to achieve the goal of stable political relations. While these two theories might seem to be in direct conflict, it must be acknowledged that the difference may be to a large extent determined by a view point and definition. Due to the authoritarian nature of China, the economic development is in fact one of the core national interests and legitimizer of the Chinese government and hence an economic performance is also a crucial political goal, even more than it is the case of Western democratic countries.

The goal of the chapter is to develop an index (Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Internationalisation Index – SMINI) to measure the degree of internationalisation in the SME sector, and to uncover its most important influencing factors. The index was calculated from a data set obtained from a questionnaire conducted among 1,124 firms from the Visegrad (V4) countries, comprised of 270 Polish, 597 Czech, 113 Hungarian and 144 Slovak firms. The relationship between the index value and the influencing factors was also tested using the same dataset. The influencing factors were chosen based on a literature review. We found that the factors suggested by the literature (company size, company age, ownership structure, innovation activity, network participation and sectorial structure) have a significant effect on the SMINI, but the strength of relationship is either weak or weak to moderate. A multiway ANOVA analysis revealed that three of our variables – firm size, family ownership and innovation – have an 11.8% combined effect on the SMINI.

This study wishes to contribute to the relatively limited circle of academic publications on Hungary’s foreign policy – in particular, in the second decade of the twenty-first century. First, it looks at major foreign policy priorities since the change of the political system in 1989 and their maintenance in the country’s external affairs policy agenda, together with the omnipresent desire to get re-positioned ‘rightly’, ‘back’ into the international community. The intention of the authors is to investigate the validity and possible execution of a ‘global opening’ in an increasingly ‘interpolar globality’, and therefore, to provide a detailed analysis of the Hungarian ‘turn towards to East’. The new foreign policy document of the country contains a re-positioning of Hungarian presence in five priority regions of the world, among which emphasis has obviously been laid on Central Europe and the Visegrád Group. The paper offers a critical analysis of both the potentials and challenges of the global opening.

István Tarrósy, Zoltán Vörös
The Foreign Policy of ‘Global Opening’ and Hungarian Positions in an Interpolar World
In: István Tarrósy, Ágnes Tuka, Zoltán Vörös, Andrea Schmidt (szerk.)
European Integration: Perspectives and Challenges: How 'Borderless' Is Europe?. 822 p.
Pécs: IDResearch Kft.; Publikon, 2014. pp. 273-296.
(ISBN:978-615-5457-24-1)

The first of three publications on the ’25 Years After – Mapping Civil Society in the Visegrád Four’ project contains an overview of existing data and literature in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. It looks at where and what kind of research on civil society has been and is being done, who is doing it and where the gaps are.
To be consistent and comparable, the four country reports include the same core sections: relevant publications on civil society in the respective country; existing databases and other data sources; active centres of research, training, and policy studies. More than providing just a list, we look at how they can be evaluated in terms of scope, accurateness and depth. Finally, we consider the question what the most crucial gaps in research and funding in the countries are.
With this commented collection of data, we aim at providing a basis for further research on and the development of civil society in the region. Also, we try to show the state of the research infrastructure as it has developed over the last 25 years. To this end, we take a look at the alignment of existing institutions. Public institutions, e.g. statistical offices are important providers of studies and usable raw-data in all four countries. Private research institutions also exist, but their activity is different in each of the countries. Given little support and resources, they are yet involved in reducing the gaps left by public research. Public institutions concentrate on questions relating to the ’Third Sector’ and its economic capacity, as is the case in most European countries.

Aliaksei Kazharski and Clarissa do Nascimento Tabosa in their text further zoom in on the concept of securitization, which has become one of the most popular approaches to analyze interactions between political and security processes, especially within national contexts. This approach builds on the constructivist position claiming that security threats do not exist ‘out there’ objectively, but need to be socially constructed to be perceived as threats.
Realizing this allows analysts to study how and when something is
securitized, who conducts the process with what aims and whether the
securitization is successful (something is accepted as a threat) or not. Some of the most relevant examples of securitization discussed in the chapter are the bilateral securitization of each other between the Soviet Union and Capitalist West, as well as securitization of Russia in more recent years, or securitization of refugees in the Visegrad countries

Political Systems of Visegrad Group Countries. Editor Wojciech Gizicki. Trnava - Lublin : University of Ss Cyril and Methodius in Trnava in international cooperation with The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin 2012.



Juraj Marušiak. The Political System in the Slovak Republic, p. 107-148

This chapter explores how the EU–V4 relations have changed through the course of transformation from an external, regional domain to an internal partnership. Keeping in mind the fact that the V4 has become an integral part of the European Union, the analysis clearly necessitates slight modifications, compared to other case studies of the book. Thus the chapter is constructed as follows. The first part will start with the V4’s historical background between 1991 and 2004. It proceeds with the introduction of institutional relations, which in this special case will mostly focus on the V4’s institutional positions within the European Union. The ­second part of the study will demonstrate the challenges and opportunities ahead the EU–V4 relations. One the one hand, it will focus on the role of the “Visegrád brand”, and highlight its importance for the Group, while it will also introduce the added value of the V4 to the EU’s external relations. On the other hand, the analysis will also highlight political, social and economic challenges of the Visegrád Group, to point out some problems which could fundamentally undermine sustained effective cooperation among the V4. The chapter concludes, based on V4 voting patterns in the Council of the Ministers of the EU, as well as demographic and economic challenges, that internal division in the V4 prevents greater long-term cooperation.

FDI investment cannot help mitigate the huge gap in foreign trade between the two countries. In the last years the Hungarian deficit in bilateral trade continuously increased. Hungary could not reach surplus even in agriculture. While a regional leader in incoming FDI, Hungary is still negligible from the point of view of China.

The concept of “multispeed integration”is a re-occurring theme, evoked periodically by both supporters and opponents of deeper integration, when the consensus on the speed and direction of the integration was weak. This also leads to a vagueness of the concept – especially when similar concepts, with partly overlapping meanings, are simultaneously
used in the discussion.
This paper discusses the perception of multispeed integration” in Visegrad countries. It does not have an ambition to provide comprehensive definitions, nor detailed description of the history
of this concept. Instead, it focuses on the current debate on the future of
the European integration, framed by the years 2014-2019.

ARTYKUŁY
Witold J. Wilczyński, “Jedność w różnorodności”: geneza i geopolityczne znaczenie idei
Adam Biliński, The effects of immigration on the support for radical right in the West and its geopolitical implications
Roman Szul, Metamorfozy Europy w świetle teorii imperiów-cywilizacji
Robert Białoskórski, Distribution of power in the Visegrad countries. A powermetric approach
Sylwia Zawadzka, Biometric technology in European Union border management after 2015
Filip Walczak, Pandemia CoViD-19 i potencjalne wyzwania dla bezpieczeństwa morskiego
Bohdan Pac, Planowanie rozwoju sił morskich Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej

ANALIZY I MATERIAŁY
Paweł Soroka, Stanowisko Polskiego Lobby Przemysłowego w sprawie likwidacji polskich sił podwodnych
Orazio M. Gnerre, The Mediterranean thalactic civilization in the thought of Ernst Kapp and Carl Schmitt
Krzysztof Jabłoński, Zadośćuczynienie a nie reparacje (o polskich roszczeniach wobec Niemiec i Rosji) – wywiad z prof. Markiem J. Chodakiewiczem
STANOWISKA I SPRAWOZDANIA
IV edycja Międzynarodowej Olimpiady Geopolitycznej
XIII Zjazd Geopolityków Polskich pt. “Geopolityka praktyczna w czasie pandemii” 5 grudnia 2021 r.

POLEMIKI I RECENZJE
John P. LeDonne, Forging a Unitary State: Russia’s Management of the Eurasian Space, 1650-1850, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo & London 2020 – Witold J. Wilczyński

The aim of the publication is to analyze whether there is any Visegrad commonly shared identity or not and what could be the integrative factor of the Visegrad Group. The authors of the publication cover the following topics – historical identities; historical memory; economic cohesion and the level of
economic cooperation of the V4 states; the role of the Visegrad topics in the university education and the political culture of the V4 states.

The publication shows that the Visegrad cooperation is still based on the interests rather than on the commonly shared identity. However, the citizens of V4 countries already perceive Visegrad as a relevant and meaningful regional group. The fact that Visegrad is considered by the domestic political
elites as well as by the political elites abroad as a “brand” or “mark” has a significant contribution to the construction of the regional identity. However, still the motivation of the political leaders to develop the Visegrad cooperation is more pragmatic than based on the awareness of belonging together. The
external factors (the EU, gas crisis between Russia and Ukraine in January 2009) and their demand for response still have more efficient impact on the strengthening of V4 cooperation compared to the pressure from inside.
V4 could be regarded as more successful project of transition and integration compared to the rest of post-communist states in Central and East Europe both from political and economic perspective. However, there are still substantial differences in the level of economic development, impact of crisis
on the V4 states economies, in the living standards, as well as in the political cultures and patterns of political behaviour of citizens. The region of Central and East Europe, including Visegrad, still remains a periphery of the EU, although the EU membership of V4 countries and generally the EU presence in the entire region acts as a factor of stability and contributes to its de-peripheralization. The significant trend for the Visegrad societies is the decreasing level of democracy and growing support of authoritarianism in the region. The de-democratization is not purely the result of sophisticated political programs of certain parts of Visegrad political elites, but it is a result of subconscious practice and pragmatically formulated short-term political targets. However, Visegrad is still a zone of stability, compared to South, South East and East Europe, in part because of the more successful reforms in 1990s and higher efficiency of governance. The peripheralization and marginalization still remains a certain threat for the V4 and Central Europe in general. Such threats are not only the results of the economic or political infrastructure inherited from the Communist past, but their sources consist in some domestic policies implemented since the political changes at the turn of 1980s and 1990s. The improvement of the efficiency of the government’s engagement in the economy is highly recommended. The changes are required in the regional policy as well in order to push the subnational territorial units to formulate their own autonomous approaches to regional development in order to overcome the regional disparities. A significant gap still persists between the “old EU members” and Central European states, including V4, in the financing of the education, science and welfare system. The underdevelopment of these branches could have a negative impact on the future of democracy in the entire region of Central and East Europe.

Content

Introduction (Juraj Marušiak)

Chapter 1
Historical Dimension of Mutual Relationships of Visegrad Members (Zdeněk Veselý)

Chapter 2
Regional Trajectories and Regional Policies in V4 Region: Consequences of Scalar
Restructuring of Neoliberal Globalization (Pavel Šuška)

Chapter 3
Economic Legitimacy of Visegrad Group (Franjo Štiblar)

Chapter 4
Precipices beneath Summits? The Visegrad Cooperation Seen from Middle Policy Levels (Artur Wołek)

Chapter 5
Mental Map of the V4 Group or How Do We Perceive Each Other? (Oľga Gyárfášová)

Chapter 6
The Visegrad Topic in University Education (Andor Mészáros)

Chapter 7
V4 at a Crossroad? (Svetozár Krno)

Chapter 8
Visegrad Group - an Unstable Periphery of the European Union? (Juraj Marušiak)

Concluding Remarks (Juraj Marušiak)