Hungary's Western Balkan policy in the Visegrad context

Abstract

While analyzing the Visegrad engagement in South East Europe, this paper will focus on two aspects of foreign policy: bilateral relations between the Visegrad Four and the Western Balkan countries, and the Visegrad contribution to the EU’s foreign policy in the region. In particular, those few issues and instances will be concentrated on when the Visegrad countries – individually or in a joint enterprise – managed to make use of an emerging policy niche and adopted an original course of action by which they not only differed from the EU’s main policy line but also managed to influence it. This paper will argue however, that even though all four states in general share a pro-enlargement stance, in practice the main divide between devoted supporters of Euro-Atlantic enlargement to South Eastern Europe and those preferring to take a more cautious approach by demanding tough conditionality lie elsewhere than on the borders of the Visegrad group. It will be further argued that in the area of dealing with the so called high policy issues, such as the constitutional reform in Bosnia, the Macedonian name fiasco or the challenge of North Kosovo, the large (and old) member states together with the United States dictate the agenda. At the same time, the engagement of the Visegrad Four at a lower policy level is expected and appreciated in the EU, which is where they might bring something new to the table with regard to the EU’s Western Balkan strategy.