Founded on 15th February 1991, the Visegrad Group (also known as the “Visegrad Four” or simply “V4”) represents the efforts of the Central European countries Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic to work together and become members of the European Union (EU).
Although they achieved this mutual goal and became EU members, V4 members continued their cooperation in several fields, such as culture, environment, internal security, defense, science, and education. Furthermore, the members of the Visegrad Group are intensifying their cooperation in the fields of justice, transportation, tourism, energy, and information technologies.
Since V4 is not an institutionalized organization, all of the above stated is realized through periodical meetings of its representatives at various levels – from the highest-level political summits to expert and diplomatic meetings, to the activities of the non-governmental associations in the region, think-tanks and research bodies, cultural institutions or numerous networks of individuals.
Also, V4 organized platform known as International Visegrad Fund in the year 2000 with the aim of supporting the development of cooperation in culture, scientific exchange, research, education, exchange of students and development of cross-border cooperation and promotion of tourism—represents the civic dimension of V4 cooperation.
Besides cooperating on achieving goals in the mentioned fields, V4 members are also working hard and are dedicated to extending cooperation with other regional bodies and single countries, where their priorities are the Benelux Countries (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg), the countries of the Nordic Council of Ministers (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), countries within the EU’s Eastern Partnership (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine) and the Western Balkans (North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina).
On the other side, countries like Germany, Austria, and Ukraine represent the most important economic and strategic partners of the Group.
Looking at the Human Development Report it is notable that all V4 members are high ranked countries where Poland is ranked as a 33rd country in the world, Czechia 27th, Slovakia 38th and Hungary 45th.
In addition to this World Bank Report – Doing Business 2019 ranked Hungary 53rd, Poland 33rd, Slovakia 42nd and Czech Republic 35th country in the world regarding ease of doing business.
