Section: Visegrad Insight (Poland)
Visegrad governments play into Moscow’s hands
The original purpose of the Visegrad initiative was for the four re-emerging Central European democracies to coordinate their pursuit of NATO and EU membership. However, since achieving its primary targets, the V4 has proved unable to coordinate the disparate foreign policies of its members and lacks a clear geopolitical identity. While...
Trade Wars
Discussions about TTIP demonstrate that after centuries of trade wars, European nations are well aware of how trade agreements can affect their economies. Martin Ehl showcases the changing face of competition through the ages. Central Europe has always been a crossroads of trade, quite often of goods produced elsewhere. Customs and trade rulers...
The Dismantling of Alliances
One year after the victory of the Law and Justice (PiS) party in the parliamentary elections, Poland is facing a multitude of problems many of which stem from the incoherent foreign policy of the ruling party. Whether it be attempting to forge stronger ties with neighbours in the region or trying to assert its “growing” power in Europe, the...
Rebranding the Visegrad Group
Vojtěch Boháč: How do you perceive the Visegrad group from your professional point of view? What do you think can be improved? Szymon Walkiewicz: The main question is: “What is the V4?” In the very beginning, when they set up the group, the task was clear and everybody knew its purpose. However, after the four countries entered the EU in 2004, it...
Where Should the External Priorities of the Visegrád Lie?
The real priorities of a foreign policy of any state should reflect the overall dynamics of the international context (i.e. threats for national security or opportunities for the expansion of the state’s role vis-a-vis other players). This should also apply to alliances and inter-state groupings. Today, the V4 faces the sort of challenges...
Wargames in Warsaw
Just six months after the NATO Summit, military experts from NATO, think tanks and former members of the military gathered in a small room with only a few computers on the 2nd floor of Poland’s national stadium to play a wargame: a mock Russian invasion of the Baltic states. The purpose? Assess all of the Alliance’s capabilities and...
Revival of the Red Infiltration
Almost three decades after the end of the Soviet occupation, the countries of Central Europe (CE) are once again at a geopolitical crossroads. After successive waves of migrants flowed over the continent in 2015 and as a struck several Western European cities, the rarely united Visegrad countries have started to question the immigration policies...
Alleged Czech Discomfort
Visegrad Insight in partnership with Eastern Europe Network of Fellows of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation is pleased to present articles by Jörg Winterbauer, Zsuzsanna Végh and Vít Dostál created on the occasion of ‘Germany and the Visegrad States: Potentials and Challenges of Cooperation’ conference in Warsaw, 25-27 November 2016. When the...
Germany and the V4 states cannot afford not to cooperate closely
Visegrad Insight in partnership with Eastern Europe Network of Fellows of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation is pleased to present articles by Jörg Winterbauer, Zsuzsanna Végh and Vít Dostál created on the occasion of ‘Germany and the Visegrad States: Potentials and Challenges of Cooperation’ conference in Warsaw, 25-27 November 2016. The...
The integrity of Central Europe is in peril
Who would have thought that Europe’s margins – places that always, as Czeslaw Milosz wrote, “knew far more about the West than the West ever knew or cared about the East” – could change the world by remaking the continent, bring down an empire of tyranny and rekindle the dream of a free, liberal and whole Europe. Those who were lucky to see...
