Conference Agenda

In a video address to a joint V4 parliamentary committee meeting in December 2021 Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto claimed that the Visegrad Group (VG) “comprising the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia is ‘the closest, most effective and most successful’ alliance within the European Union today” and added that “(i)n recent years the four countries have achieved results together that they could not have on their own”. Szijjarto was speaking around the time of two highly pertinent developments - not long after the VG reached its 30^th birthday but also shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The former marking a remarkable achievement and clear sign of enduring resonance and relevance; the latter leading (not for the first time in the VG’s history) to narratives of imminent stagnation if not demise based on longstanding divergent V4 relations with the Kremlin turning from something relatively benign for VG cooperation prospects (Russia was essentially a ‘taboo’ topic) to a fundamental and significant breach in VG cohesion. Yet in late 2023 (some 19 months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a matter of weeks since the latest ‘crisis’ of the Slovak election outcome potential expansion of both the VG’s pro-Russia camp and illiberalism in the VG ranks) a flurry of top level VG meetings took place in Prague. V4 Defence Ministers met on 7/8 December and the V4 Presidents on 22 November. Thus the latest manifestation of the ‘paradox of survival’ of the VG with ample evidence of apparently continuing political dialogue and coordination and relatively undisturbed ongoing activities at the other levels of the cooperation agenda existing alongside narratives of doom.

Only time will tell whether the VG will ultimately survive the current stress tests. In the meantime this paper argues that we might get some clues about its future prospects by reflecting on the 30 years+ of VG cooperation so far and its undoubted status as the most durable and high-profile central European subregional entity. Particular attention will be paid to two key factors: (1) the importance of the multi-level nature of the VG cooperation agenda which has evolved into clearly discernible local, regional and global dimensions; (2) the implications of the VG’s transformation into an established intra-EU grouping (the only post-communist subregional alliance to have done so) alongside the ‘old’ subregionalisms - the Nordic Council (NC) and Benelux Economic Union (BEU) respectively.

The history of European integration after the Second World War is characterized by a crisis-led policy-making process in which the small states and their leadership have played from the outset a critical role. This is the case for the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg – one of the smallest countries of our continent but the 1^st in terms of wealth (as measured by GDP/capita) – which adopted, in its strategical approach to multilateralism and regional integration, an international outlook both for security and economic reasons, and pioneered the emergence of the European project by being in 1951 one of the six founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and, subsequently, the workplace of the newly established ECSC supranational institutions. Since then, Luxembourg has acted a mediator and a source of ideas in the EU, either as a member State, or through some of its leadership. Based on a wide range of archival documents and new oral history sources, this paper will examine how the Grand-Duchy had progressively become a leading player and consensus builder in the European integration history, and had consolidated its soft power status stemmed from its capacity to foresee and resolve crisis situations, and from the influential nature of its leadership.

This interdisciplinary project, comprising perspectives from political science and history, focuses on understanding why the dynamics of cross-border collaborations at subnational levels, specifically regional and municipal, vary to such a high degree. Cross-border collaborations represent an international phenomenon occurring on all continents. They also have a relatively extensive history in Europe, where formal cross-border collaborations were initiated in the 1950s and in the Nordic countries during the 1960s. Supported by states and the EU, such collaborations have been anticipated to play a central role in both national development policies and in the integration of Europe. However, scholars have observed that investments in cross-border collaborations have evolved differently across regions, resulting in a high degree of variation in outcomes. In this paper, we are exploring this dynamic. We argue that previous research has often been overly focused on identifying success factors and ‘best practice’ rather than attempting to comprehend how cross-border collaboration processes actually function and how historical and political processes shape their specific dynamics.

Researchers have frequently referred to several factors to explain successful cross-border collaborations, such as: shared goals, political transparency and participation, mobility, economic attraction, shared experience, and identity. Despite a strong focus on creating successful cross-border collaborations based on scientifically derived criteria and the emergence of legal tools such as the EU's EGTC certification, the results have been mixed. Despite extensive knowledge about factors that can promote cross-border collaborations, there is a significant lack of insights into the factors that explain the dynamics, including stagnant collaborations (Castanho et al., 2018). Moreover, longer historical perspectives are often missing in evaluations and analyses of cross-border collaborations, resulting in the exclusion of important historical processes (Molema & Svensson, 2019; Svensson, 2015). This paper aims to contribute new knowledge by employing process tracing as a methodological approach to elucidate the mechanisms that are significant in understanding the dynamics in the development of specific cross-border collaborations.

The study focuses on two Nordic cross-border collaborations that have evolved with different dynamics: the Öresund Region, which in 2016 became Greater Copenhagen at Danish initiative, and the Kvarken Council EGTC, which has been the first and only EGTC-certified region in the Nordic countries since 2020. In both cases, they represent old Nordic collaborations dating back to the 1960s and 1970s but have taken two different paths—the former following the traditional Nordic collaboration approach and the latter embracing a new tool (EGTC) for institutionalization.

Like many European states, Sweden has built its welfare system upon economic growth, with orthodox policy assumptions requiring ongoing economic growth to support continued welfare provision. However, such assumptions have come under attack in recent years: ecological economists question the possibility and desirability of continued economic growth on a finite planet, and neoliberalism has undermined commitment to the provision of high levels of public welfare by public actors. Economic growth is now a shared policy area between all four political levels within Swedish politics (municipal, regional, national, and the EU). The ecological issue is addressed at best indirectly: each region must develop a Regional Development Plan which privileges economic growth. Moreover, the rules according to which this must take place are primarily set at EU and national levels, and each plan is focused on a given region, with no mechanism to manage competition between them as they all seek to maximise their economic development. This paper asks whether and how it is possible for all Swedish regions to gain from such a structural shift, and if not, what are the implications for the provision of public welfare? In a neoliberal economy, can all regions be ‘winners’? Or will one, or some, of them find that their ‘victory’ in economic development requires the failure of other regions in the country?