A series of three events commemorating the 30 year anniversary of the Visegrad Group, held in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute in London. Our series explores the Visegrad Group from its economic, cultural, and political aspects to assess its successes and failures over the past thirty years and consider what to expect from the Visegrad Four in the future.

The Visegrad Countries in the Global Order

Wednesday 10 March 2021 4:00pm to 5:30pm

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What is the role of the Visegrad Group in the context of the international order?

Each of its constituent members (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) are also members of the European Union, NATO, the Three Seas Initiative and the UN. What purpose does the Visegrad Group serve today, and what role does it play in fostering the region’s security priorities? How effective has it been as a political alliance?

In this exploration of the political life of the Visegrad Group, we will consider the context of its establishment, the enormous geopolitical shifts of the past thirty years and the realities of its political relationships today.

Peter Balazs, Central European University 

Vladimír Bilčík, Member of the European Parliament 

Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, Member of the European Parliament 

Alison Smale, journalist and former UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications

Michael Žantovský, Executive Director of the Václav Havel Library

Meet the chair

Michael Cox is Founding Director of LSE IDEAS and Emeritus Professor in International Relations at LSE.

Seeing Central Europe 30 Years On: film and the arts in the Visegrad countries.

Monday 15 February 2021 4:00pm to 5:30pm

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In this online discussion we will explore the Visegrad countries’ cultural development since 1991 with a particular focus on film and theatre.

We will consider how these Central European countries have explored and expressed their identities in a post-cold war space, how the arts and cultural scenes have responded to global market economy conditions, and how theatre and cinema have enabled peoples from the region and beyond to both remember and break away from their pre-1989 experiences.

We will also discuss more generally the state of the arts in the Visegrad countries, the intersection between culture and politics, and the role the arts play in everyday lives and cultural discourse in the region.

This digital event will take place on the exact anniversary of the Visegrad Group establishment, celebrating 30 years of cooperation between the V4 countries.

Csaba Kael

Karel Och

Zuzana Uličianska

Krzysztof Zanussi

Mary Martin

Spotlight on the Visegrad Economies

Wednesday 20 January 2021 4:00pm to 5:30pm

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This 90-minute online discussion will consider the economic indicators and outputs of the V4 (Visegrad Group) and ask how the V4 economies are performing. What are the characteristics of these Central European economies? What is the impact of foreign investment on the economies and political decision-making across the Group? How can we expect them to perform in the coming years?

We will consider the economic priorities and policies of each country, how the four countries interact as economies and how the Visegrad Group alliance has influenced economic and business decision-making in the region and beyond.

Martin Kahanec is Professor and Acting Dean (2020-21, 2017-19) of the School of Public Policy at the Central European University in Budapest. He is a member of the national COVID-19 Economic Crisis Management Council at the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic and member of Minister’s advisory council. His main research interests are labor and population economics, migration, EU mobility, ethnicity, and reforms in European labor markets.

Lubomir Lizal has been President of the Anglo-American University in Prague since August 2018. He is a Czech economist who served most recently as a member of the Bank Board of the Czech National Bank.

Zsoka Koczan is a Senior Economist at the EBRD Office of the Chief Economist. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining the EBRD Zsoka worked as an economist at the IMF in the European Department and in the Research Department. Her current research focuses on within-country income disparities, migration and inequality.

Dora Piroska is Associate Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest. She is also a visiting professor at the IR Department of Central European University. She holds a PhD from the CEU in Political Science. Her research focuses on the political economy of banking and finance, development finance both at the national and international levels. She has particular interest in the Eastern European region.

Krzysztof Mazur is a political scientist. He served as Undersecretary of State in the Polish Ministry of Development from 2019-2020.

Piroska Nagy-Mohácsi is a macroeconomist and Interim Director of the Institute of Global Affairs at the School of Public Policy of the LSE. She was formerly Policy Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and co-created and co-led the Vienna Initiative in 2008-15, a public-private crisis management and coordination platform in emerging Europe, and headed its Secretariat.

LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE’s foreign policy think tank. We connect academic knowledge of diplomacy and strategy with the people who use it.