On Wednesday, 11 November 2015, at the release of special issue of the journal European Perspectives, devoted to Slovenia’s role in the Visegrad Group, Centre for European Perspective organized a round table on this topic.
The discussion was opened by Director of CEP, dr. Gorazd Justinek, followed by a welcome letter from the President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, dr. Milan Brglez, in which he expressed that European future cannot exist without the Central European countries, which, in his opinion, also includes Slovenia. Guests were also addressed by the Ambassador of Poland, His Excellency Mr. Pawel Czerwinski and Editor in Chief, prof. dr. Milan Jazbec.
The event was attended by about 40 guests, including representatives of the diplomatic corps in Slovenia (Ambassador of Albania, Austria, Kosovo, Hungary, Turkey and representatives of the Embassies of Slovakia, Czech Republic, Croatia, and China), representatives of NGOs and academics.
At the round table academics, who were also the authors of the articles in the journal, from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia participated. The discussion was led by Ms. Katja Geršak. All the participants in the debate pointed out to a reservation to a certain degree regarding Slovenia’s entry to the Visegrad Group, both politically as well as in the field of public opinion. However, they also stressed that the countries of the Visegrad Group are not very inclined toward expansion of this exclusive group. Authors pointed out that despite the various previous forms of the Central European regional cooperation at various levels (eg. V4 +) such participation unfortunately didn’t work for a long time. Extended Visegrad Group would indeed, according to the authors, could take advantage of a greater number of votes harmonized within the European Union, as well as in the wider global diplomacy and the economy.
Participants at the round table were: Matej Avbelj (Faculty for State and European Studies), Daniel Barth from the Hungarian Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy (CEID), Marek Lenč from the Slovak Faculty of Political Sciences and International Relations, Matej Bel University, Anna Orosz from the Hungarian Institute of Foreign Affairs and Trade (IFAT), Tomas Stražay from the Research Center of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association, Boštjan Udovič (Faculty of Social Sciences) and Anna Visvizi from the Polish Institute of Eastern-Central Europe (IESW).
Project was funded by International Visegrad Fund.
