Home › Archive › Articles and Publications › Policy Paper | Democratic Participation, Integration, and Trust within the Visegrád Group: Twenty Years Since European Union IntegrationPolicy Paper | Democratic Participation, Integration, and Trust within the Visegrád Group: Twenty Years Since European Union Integration
This paper contextualizes and analyzes data pertaining to democratic participation, institutional trust, and integration of the Visegrád Group—Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia—into the European Union twenty years since accession. This paper explores the history and functionality of the Visegrád Group as a political collective both before and during EU membership. A representative survey across the four countries provides substantive insights into the current state of EU cohesion during a critical period for the community. Writes Henry Barrett in his Policy Paper.
23. December 2024
In the move to integrate into the EU, material benefits in economic outputs such as labor productivity and GDP growth were realized. However, despite the measurable advantages of EU integration for the V4—the political saliency of Euroscepticism, distrust in established institutions, and national populist agendas gained traction in the 2010s. With changing domestic governments and after accession to the EU, the platform has at times been used as a bulwark against that very political body—shirking migration policy, external agricultural in-flows, or deeper EU integration via the euro.
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