The Visegrad Group As a New, Emerging Form of Differentiated Integration in EU

The Visegrad group celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2016. The Visegrad countries began to express their national interest more intensively and question previously unquestioned issues in relation to the EU. Nevertheless, this did not lead to common positions of V4 countries in EU policy areas. On the contrary, they very often expressed their opposing views in foreign policy, economic issues, energy policy etc. Just, recently, however, the V4 countries have started to act as a new geographical block in the EU. The peak of the migration crisis in 2015 could be interpreted as a start of a new era in this respect. The V4 countries often launch joint statements and declarations and also support each other in concreate actions such as sending Slovak, Czech and Polish police forces to patrol the Hungarian Schengen border.

This paper argues that V4 is a new emerging form of differentiated integration (DI) within the EU. After reviewing the milestones of the history of V4 in the post-enlargement period, the objective of the paper is to interpret V4 according to the theories and terminology of differentiated integration. V4 should be considered as a mixture of variable geometry and a la carte types of DI. This paper provides a political and policy-focused overview of the V4 cooperation focusing on current developments. Can V4 cooperation with its institutional and political structure contribute to a more active role of CEE countries in setting EU agenda in the future? This is the main question this paper seeks to answer.