The “Visegrad Inititative “VIS-À-VIS“ Open Balkan Inititative” in the process of European Integration

Abstract

Following the collapse of the communist regimes, in Central European countries, the belief that collaborative efforts could facilitate both social transformation and European integration, served as a key motivation for establishing of the Visegrad Group (V4), comprising of Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. In Southeastern Europe, given the war conflicts that occurred during the 1990s, in 1999, the EU Council initiated the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP) to encourage Western Balkans countries (WB) to cooperate among themselves and confirmed their eligibility for EU membership. After the V4 countries joined the EU, the Visegrad Declaration on cooperation in 2004 emphasized the idea of supporting the European integration of neighboring regions, including the Western Balkan region. From 2004 to the present day, the WB countries have applied for EU membership, and they have been granted EU candidate country status. In 2014 they became a part of the Berlin process (BP)initiative and for three of them – Albania, North Macedonia (N. Macedonia) and Serbia – accession negotiations with EU have already been opened. These three countries launched the Mini Schengen initiative in 2019, which was transformed into Open Balkan initiative (OB3) in 2021. Since that both Visegrad and Open Balkan in itiatives aim to enhance interstate cooperation and facilitate European integration process for their respective countries, the purpose of this paper is to consider the role of regional organizations and initiatives in accelerating the integration process, to examine whether the OB3 can draw valuable lessons from V4 experience and to elucidate how V4 supports the integration process of OB3.