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Visegrad Four and Ukraine: possibilities of cooperation
Section 10. Political science
Krushynska Oleksandra Vadymivna, Shevchenko Taras National University of Kyiv, graduate student, Institute of International Relations E-mail: alekskru94@gmail.com
Visegrad Four and Ukraine: possibilities of cooperation
Abstract: The article deals with the outlook of Ukrainian relations with the Visegrad Group member states. The perspectives of cooperation in “V4+” format are analyzed.
Keywords: Ukraine, Visegrad Group, Russia, European Union, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary.
Introduction
The fundamental changes in the system of international relations that took place in the late 20th century forced all countries of the European continent to look for their place in the new reality. Foremost it concerned the Eastern Europe states. In order to unite their efforts towards building a democratic society with a market economy and integration into the European Union Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary formed the Visegrad Three in 1991 (after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 — Visegrad Four). In the founding document the member states pledged to coordinate their policies in cooperation with European institutions, to ensure freedom of contact between citizens, institutions, religious and social organizations, promote the free movement of labor and capital, to attract foreign direct investment, to develop joint infrastructure projects, to cooperate in the fields of ecology, the free flow of information, media development and cultural values, to protect rights of national minorities and promote the expansion of contacts between local authorities [16].
Transformations within member states have proven to be successful, and in year 2004 all of them acquired the full EU membership. Although technically that was considered to be the ultimate goal of the Visegrad Four, the group did not collapse after that, on the contrary, four countries decided to continue coordination of their efforts to ensure further development. During more than twenty years of V4 existence its members managed to achieve a lot, despite the informal character of association. First of all, they were able to achieve an atmosphere of mutual understanding within the group and to bring outside arguments in bilateral relations that could slow down the positive transformations. Traditionally Slovak-Hungarian relations are considered to be the most problematic, primarily because of the status of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, but even these two countries prefer to find a compromise within V4 [13]. The so-called institution of the presidency also contributes to coordination of policies in various areas. Every year one member state takes on the informal leadership of the association, defines the agenda of its actions
for the next year (approved by all members) and is responsible for its implementation. Thanks to this institution Visegrad Four did not turn into a forum or platform for an exchange of views between political leaders after accession of member states to the EU [13].
Within V4 a lot of concrete achievements were made. One of them is the creation of the International Visegrad Fund. Being the only formalized institute of the Visegrad Group, the fund provides grants for development projects related to civil society, with a special focus on non-governmental structures. Since the fund provided also grants for projects from neighboring states, they contribute to the development of international contacts ofV4 countries at all levels and eventually, because of the nature of these projects, to the creation of a safer and more developed environment for the whole Viseg-rad Group [13]. Also the progress in ensuring of the member states’ energy security is notable. All four countries are dependent on imported energy resources, mainly from Russia. In early 2009, they were faced with the unpredictability of Russia as a partner and the problem of gas supply depending on the political situation in the region. To prevent the future recurrence of this situation, the Visegrad countries decided to provide a gradual conversion to alternative energy sources and development of infrastructure that would allow them to reduce dependence on Russia (including interconnector networks and liquefied natural gas terminals). Appropriate intentions were fixed in the Joint Statement on 24 February 2010, which, in addition to members of the V4, signed by representatives of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia and Romania [4].
Today Ukraine finds itself in a more than difficult situation, both in view of the situation inside the country and in terms of foreign policy environment. After the political turmoil in 2013-2014 the European way of development seems the only possible option for the majority of Ukrainians. It is no wonder that today Ukraine calls for help from Visegrad countries. In December 2014 in Kiev there was a meeting of Ukrainian President and the representatives of Czech
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Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, during which Petro Poroshenko expressed his hope for transformation of “V4” into “V5” in the nearest future [10]. Currently Ukrainian hopes are associated with two possible aspects of further interaction with the Visegrad Four. On one hand, it is believed that the Visegrad countries can serve as “advocates” of Ukraine in the European and Atlantic structures, taking into consideration the similarity of historical destiny and geographic proximity. On the other hand, Ukraine hopes, that the Four will help in implementing internal reforms. And even if the positions of individual member states towards Ukraine are different, as a union they really can contribute to the successful transformation of the country.
All four members of the Visegrad Four have sad memories about relations with Russia as the legal successor of the USSR. Taking that into account, it would seem, that their sympathy in today’s conflict must be on the side of Ukraine as another victim of Russian aggression, and that they would lobby Ukrainian interests within the European institutions. However,
in practice things are not that simple. Each of the V4 countries in this situation remembers about its complex set of social, political and economic interests, and the fear of a repetition of the Russian aggression does not always prevail.
Of course, Poland takes the most loyal position to Ukraine. This is due to not only good relations between states (although they are sure to take place), but also to the Polish leadership ambitions in Eastern European sub-region. Since joining the EU this country wants to gain weight in the union, that would be equivalent to recognized leaders, like France and Germany. However, unlike the “veterans” of the EU, Poland is a frontier country and its ability to influence the sub-region is also defined through the ability to ensure stability on its own borders [9]. That is why Poland together with Sweden came up with an idea of the Eastern Partnership in 2008.
Since 2013, the situation in Ukraine is without doubt the greatest threat to security in the region. Even before the war with Russia, Poland has made every effort to resolve the political crisis peacefully, from the Koks-Kwasniewski mission to Donald Tusk mediation at signing an agreement between the Ukrainian authorities and the opposition in the most difficult days of February 2014 [9]. After the invasion of Russian troops in the Crimea and further aggression in the Donbass region threat to Poland only increased, since it is unknown, which country will be the next victim of aggression [12]. Therefore Poland and Baltic States were the most consistent supporters of the anti-Russian sanctions. It was not stopped even by the possibility of economic losses. For example, in the summer of 2014 Russia suspended import of Polish vegetables and fruit, which, according to experts, estimated at one billion Euros annually [2]. In this situation, Poland believes it possible to sacrifice immediate profits for the sake of longterm security. The same reason causes the consistent support of Ukraine on its path to European integration — in EU orbit Ukraine has more chances to become a predictable partner that does not bear threat to Poland, while after becoming
Russian satellite Ukraine may serve as a springboard for an attack, both on the Polish interests and, in the worst scenario, on Polish territory.
The Czech position on a Ukrainian situation is more moderate and cautious. On one hand, the Czech Republic has consistently supported the desire of the Ukrainian people to provide democratic transformations, especially paying attention to the repeated violations of human rights. When pro-European forces came to power as a result of Euromaidan events, Czech Republic welcomed that and promised its full assistance with the reforms in the country. Like all EU countries, the Czech Republic joined the anti-Russian sanctions. Its readiness to treat Russia as a potential threat is evidenced by the fact, that at a summit in Newport it agreed to provide the NATO Response Force with soldiers and 150 transport helicopters. Moreover, even before the summit, the Czech government decided to increase defense spending from 1.1 to 1.4 percent [6].
On the other hand, the economic interaction between Russia and the Czech Republic is very close in all sectors, from tourism to energy trading, and Czechs are not ready to risk it for the sake of Ukraine. According to President Zeman, there is civil war in Ukraine, and although Russia is present in the conflict, there is no real evidence that the Russian army is one of the warring parties. That is why he believes the EU response to be inadequate to real level of threat — he thinks that only under conditions of full invasion, like the one that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1968, it would be necessary to apply sanctions and NATO forces, up to the full-scale military operation. Although Czechs were outraged by such statements of their president, who is known for closeness to the Kremlin elite, they cannot deny that sanctions have a negative impact on the Czech economy. According to Bohuslav Sobotka, Prime Minister, the Czech Republic can not afford to lose the Russian market, because this loss will be irreparable. Russia, on the other hand, can still replace products of Czech plants by Chinese goods. In this case, even when conflict ends, the Czech Republic will not be able to resume their former positions in the Russian economy, since its goods will not be competitive compared to the Chinese [6].
Slovakia follows similar behavior patterns. Even the leaders of the country have no consensus on the behavior regarding Ukraine-Russia conflict. President Kiska has no doubt that Russian behavior is a threat in the region, and believes that the reaction of the Western powers must be appropriate. In particular, at the NATO summit in Newport Kiska stated that Slovakia intends to increase its presence in the command of NATO and offered the Alliance the possibility to use Slovak infrastructure for their exercise. In addition, he said Slovakia, following the example of the Czech Republic, is going to increase the defense budget by half a percent to 2020 [6].
However, Prime Minister Fico does not share the determination of the President regarding this conflict. According to him, the struggle of geopolitical interests of the US and Russia is unfolding, and risking the Slovak economy to support one or
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the other makes no sense. Slovakia supported the anti-Russian sanctions, but almost immediately expressed a desire to review them. According to Fico, the sanctions have proved to be counterproductive, because the confrontation continues. It would be much better to cancel the sanctions as a gesture of good will, thus encouraging Russia to open and intensive dialogue [8]. However, one cannot claim that the position Fico is one hundred percent pro-Russian. Slovakia was the first source of reverse gas supplies to Ukraine through gas pipeline “Vojany-Uzhgorod”, thus reducing Ukraine’s dependence on Russian gas (despite the fact that the dependence of the Slovak Republic on Russian gas is also significant) [6]. More likely, the Slovak Prime Minister, as well as his Czech counterpart, wants to primarily serve the economic interests of his country. Economic ties between Slovakia and Russia are even closer than the Czech-Russian and anti-Russian sanctions have affected key sectors of the Slovak economy, from industrial dual-use goods and banking sector to agriculture, that suffers from Russian sanctions in response [8].
Among four countries of the V4 Hungary is the least friendly towards Ukraine. Even before the war with Russia relations between countries were strained, because Hungary never lost an opportunity to remind about problematic issues in bilateral relations, namely concerning the situation of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine. The Hungarian government has repeatedly stated the alleged violation of political and cultural rights of 150 thousand Hungarians who live in Trans-carpathia (in reality, region has a whole system of Hungarian cultural and educational institutions, publishing houses, mass media and public associations, including those sponsored by the state budget of Ukraine). In addition, the Hungarians are widely represented in local authorities [15, 4-5]. Nevertheless, the Hungarian power still insists on the need of greater autonomy for Hungarian minority. The last statement of that kind was made by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in May 2014, just during the escalation of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Orban said that the Hungarian minority should have full autonomy within a federal Ukraine [11].
As the federalization of Ukraine was one of the main requirements of the Russian authorities at that time, this statement caused a wave of outrage in the Ukrainian society, and, to say the least, bewilderment in Europe, that tried to create a semblance of unity of positions regarding the Russian-Ukrai-nian conflict. In fact, the Orban’s policy towards Ukraine fully meets the general idea of his foreign policy. Since he has been in office, Orban consistently builds a close alliance with Russia, apparently considering it to be more important for Hungary than membership in the European Union. Thus, although the country has supported anti-Russian sanctions in 2014, Orban hastened to declare their ineffectiveness and futility, and continued to receive huge loans from Russia (for example, in February this year, Russia gave Hungary over 10 billion Euros for the construction of two power units of NPP “Paks”) and use favourable terms of contracts, particularly in the field of energy supply [14].
In fact, today Hungary is probably the biggest “friend” of Russia in the whole Europe. If the Czech Republic and Slovakia are calling for dialogue with Russia on purely pragmatic reasons, Russian-Hungarian relations share extremely strong ideological component. Orban, like Putin, likes talking about the decline of Western civilization and the futility of democratic principles of state building. His ideal is the “illiberal” state, in which it is possible to concede democratic freedoms for the sake of national economic interests [8]. So, in terms of Orban, the conflict between Ukraine and Russia is nothing more than a Western desire to keep Russia from development and prosperity, a fear of competition from her in the future. So long as he and his party “Fidesz” remain in power in Hungary, Ukraine should not expect support from it.
So, as it seems, Ukraine by no means should consider Visegrad Four for a “group of friends”. Since these countries are not linked by any formal documents that would contain the obligation have a common political line, they can not influence the foreign policies of each other. Even if Poland continues to find it necessary to defend Ukrainian interests, it does not have enough leverages to persuade member states to do the same, if they do not see benefit for themselves in this situation.
However, if we view the Visegrad Group as the union and not simply a set of neighboring countries, we can see many prospects for Ukraine to cooperate with it. Of course, it is now inappropriate to talk about the full-scale enlargement of the group. For more than twenty years of V4 existence this idea sounded repeatedly, with Slovenia and Austria being the most likely candidates. However, current members believe that the enlargement will make cooperation within the group difficult, because in this case more points of view are to be taken into consideration [13]. For interactions with partners in the EU and Eastern Partnership formula V4+ has been applied successfully for quite a long time. It allows to cooperate in certain areas without violating the balance within the Visegrad Group. It seems that Ukraine can benefit the most from coordinating the efforts in this format.
One of the priorities of such coordination is ensuring the energy security of Ukraine. Due to the conflict with Russia, Ukraine risks losing daily to import from the East, or to be forced through blackmail to yield its own interests for the sake of sufficient energy supplies. A solution to that problem is the gradual reduction of dependence on Russian gas through increasing rates of reverse gas supplies from Europe, primarily the Visegrad Group countries. Deliveries of gas from European neighbors to Ukraine began in November 2012. At a conference in Kyiv in 2013 top managers of the V4 countries’ gas transporting systems discussed the possibility of combining their regional gas market with Ukrainian by creating the network of interconnectors, and the project of Eastern European hub at the basis of Western Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities [17]. These projects were not implemented, but the pace of reverse gas supplies to Ukraine increased every year, acquiring special importance in February 2014.
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According to the Ukrainian State Statistics Committee, during the entire period of existence of reverse gas supplies Visegrad countries (primarily through Poland, Slovakia and Hungary) imported to Ukraine about 6 billon cubic meters of gas, of Slovakia gave more than a third. In 2014 the amount of reverse gas supplies from Europe totaled over 2 billion cubic meters, thus ensuring 12.7 % ofUkrainian consumption [17]. Certainly, the V4 countries are not always reliable — for example, last fall Hungary stopped reverse gas from its territory to Ukraine, most likely because of the Gazprom pressure, however, restoring them after a while [1]. But now the problem of dependence on Russian gas remains one of the most important for Ukraine, and to solve it, energy cooperation with the Visegrad countries should gain momentum.
Another promising proj ect of the V4 that Ukraine is about to join, is the Visegrad Battlegroup, which is to be brought on standby in 2016. Ukraine’s participation in this unit was assumed prior to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict — as stated in the official documents, “to become a strategic success, the battlegroup experience needs to be seized upon to open the door for more permanent forms of collaboration in the region" [3]. When the conflict started, Visegrad Four confirmed Ukraine’s participation in the group in Bratislava Declaration of 9 December 2014. Activities of the Battlegroup involve joint military exercises, coordinated defense procurement and joint defense development of member countries [5]. Although the group is intended to cease to exist in June 2016, its creators hope that this project will be the “flagship” of the future coordination of defense efforts in the region. For Ukraine participation in the group provides a chance of experience exchange with NATO countries’ armies, which in turn should help to reform its own army and its adaptation to more progressive Western standards.
Finally, considerable progress was achieved in cooperation of Ukraine with the International Visegrad Fund. Over the years, the institution became the intermediary between the Visegrad group and third countries in the field of cultural cooperation and exchange, science, education and cross-border interactions. Every year, the Ukrainian citizens are provided grants for developing projects in these areas. In addition, last year the fund started providing medium-term grants to citizens of Eastern Partnership to support reforms, political association and economic integration with the EU, strengthening institutional capacity, promoting civil society and the overall transformation of the state [7].
Conclusions
More than twenty years ago, Poland, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia agreed to work together in tackling the consequences of their socialist past and modernizing their political and economic systems, and established a Visegrad format for that purpose. Even reaching its primary goal in 2004, namely joining the EU and NATO, the group did not split, but rather continued to operate with the times. Today Visegrad Four is a successful example of coordination of efforts and viewpoints within a given sub-region, with the areas
of the interaction being very diverse, from political cooperation up to the cultural and scientific exchange.
Taking into account the positive experience of the Viseg-rad Group, Ukraine is eager to cooperate with all its members in this difficult time, when the success of its foreign and domestic policy determines the existence of Ukraine as a state. However, one must remember that this cooperation can take place in two different ways. On the one hand, it comes to bilateral relations of the Ukraine and each member of the group, on the other hand — the relationship with the association itself. And although Ukraine is trying to give equivalent consideration to both areas, it appears that their prospects are not the same.
From all countries of V4 Poland is so far the biggest Ukrainian partner. To support Ukraine, Poland is even ready to partly concede of its own economic interests, as the Polish economy is largely dependent on exports to Russia. This is due to the fact that Poland believes the Russian interference in Crimea and Donbass to be threat to its own security, and would do anything to stop Russia from further attempts to change the balance of power on the continent in its favor. Czech Republic and Slovakia, in turn, took a more cautious stance. Although they find the Russian position towards Ukraine unacceptable and supported appropriate sanctions of the EU, these states are not ready to concede their well established economic relations with Russia. For this reason the leaders of the Czech Republic and Slovakia regularly call for the abolition or at least review of sanctions, and dialogue and compromise with Russia, which, in turn, is not in the interests of Ukraine, for it believes the preservation and extension of sanctions to be a primary necessity. As for Hungary, it is most attached to Russia of all four states, not only for economic, but for ideological reasons — rejection of Western values, desire to build an alternative to “liberal” state system and so on [8].
Thus, at the level of bilateral relations Ukraine today should not hope for wide support from Visegrad countries. To change the situation in its favor, Ukraine must become a reliable and necessary partner — more necessary than Russia, which still has a significant presence in the region. However, in relations with the Visegrad Four as a group Ukraine has many more opportunities. In the V4 format in December 2014 these countries agreed to help Ukraine in implementing internal reforms — Poland in public administration, Slovakia — in energy policy, the Czech Republic — in matters of civil society, education and the media, and Hungary — in restructuring of the economy and development of small and medium businesses [11]. And although mechanisms of this assistance are still not clear, Ukraine has joined the considerable number of Visegrad initiatives, the most important of which seem to be related to its energy security. More joint projects still exist only on paper, but they can be useful for Ukraine as well. Therefore, the cooperation with the Visegrad Four is an important vector in Ukraine’s foreign policy and reduce rates of this partnership seems to be unacceptable.
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