| Abstract [eng] |
The study was concerned with researching the regional cooperation of Visegrad Group of Central European countries which managed to gain importance from 2015 when the migration crisis started in EU. The research focused on an interesting puzzle with regard to V4, triggered by refugee crisis. During the migration crisis V4 emerged as a collective actor and managed to present united stance on highly politicized issue such as migration which was highly unexpected of the group. As literature review demonstrated there exists several explanations what led V4 to collective action in response to refugee crisis, however the aim of this research was to narrow down the existing gap in the literature and take into consideration the role of individual national leaders of Visegrad Group while assessing the Visegrad cooperation. The peculiar structure of V4, which implies the absence of institutionalism and the flexible cooperation mechanism ensure, together with respective national constitutions of member states that the national political leaders are the key decision makers inside the group. Therefore, the idea was to explore the role of individual political leaders of member states in the emergence of V4 as a collective actor in response to refugee crisis. Study took into consideration the limitations of theoretical frameworks and is more of a descriptive nature rather than explanative. The research question was the following: Did V4 Prime Ministers reveal political will with regard to V4 collective stance to the refugee crisis? Based on two analytical frameworks and using mainly qualitative content analysis as well as secondary data analysis study yielded the following conclusion: The Prime Ministers of V4 member states revealed single political will with regard to migration crisis. While it can not be further determined whether national political leaders provided political leadership during the refugee crisis or not, the study can claim that the necessary condition for providing political leadership i.e. political will existed on behalf of individual political leaders of V4 member states. |
