Subregional cooperation usually results from a natural reflex to join forces in solving neighbourly problems. It is often based on cultural and ethnic proximity. It is an extension of the old truth: “look for friends near and for enemies far”.
Subregionalism in Europe was born after World War II and flourished in the 1990s.
In 1952, the Nordic Council was established. It came into being by agreement between the parliaments of the founding countries: Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Sweden. Later, Finland joined (it dared to reveal its intention to join only in 1955), as well as Greenland, the Åland Islands and the Faroe Islands, creating an ontologically interesting union of parliaments of sovereign states and sub-state regions (whose representatives function within the delegations of their states). A separate body is the Nordic Council of Ministers operating since 1971.
The Nordic Council does not deal with foreign policy and defense matters. It focuses on cultural, scientific, economic and environmental cooperation. It was in the Scandinavian region in 1952 that the possibility of crossing borders without passports was introduced, and in 1958 a formal passport union was established, treated as a precursor of the Schengen regime. The region was also included in the single labour market at an early stage. Despite the divisions in terms of belonging to the European Union and NATO, the countries of the region maintain quite a strong regional bond and solidarity in striving for the interests of the region, also in applying for international positions or hosting cultural and other events. They consult regularly in international forums. But politically the Nordic body format is of no great importance and without any aspirations in the European system.
The same goes for Benelux. It united the countries of the region into a monetary, customs and economic union (the union functioned originally in 1921 as a monetary union between Belgium and Luxembourg, and from 1948 as a customs union of the three countries). The Benelux Economic Union, signed in 1958, was undoubtedly a testing ground for the entire process of European integration. Likewise, the abolition of border controls in Benelux from the 1970s became a pioneering test for the Schengen process for the entire European Union. The Benelux Union functioning in the present treaty form does not have any major ambitions to influence the great European politics.
The dismantling of the Iron Curtain in Central Europe revived sub-regional politics in the region. In 1989, the Central European Initiative was launched (initially as the so-called Quadragonale with the participation of Austria, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Italy, which were later joined by Czechoslovakia to form the Pentagonale, then Poland – in the Hexagonale, and from 1992 a whole host of countries joined it, leading the group to 18 members, and going far beyond the framework of Central Europe, even with a very flexible definition of this concept). The forum was initiated by Italy. The Italians wanted to influence politics in the Western Balkans through it. But the motivation was added later on to ensure for the initiative the role of a guide for post-communist countries on their way to Western structures (and even to prevent Germany from taking over Central Europe in the reborn Mitteleuropa formula). However, it began to resemble an attempt to resurrect the world from the times of Franz Josef than a real political vehicle.
The Initiative’s agenda has been all-encompassing like a Christmas tree to include many political, good governance, economic, media freedom, environmental, cultural, scientific, educational and training matters. A permanent secretariat was created. Politically, however, the Initiative turned out to be a burden beyond strength for Italians aspiring to the role of leader. And when Austria, a kind of co-leader, decided in 2018 to say goodbye to the Initiative, the whole project plunged into a crisis.
The Visegrad Group was to implement quite ambitious political plans. The first informal contacts between Poland, Hungary and (still then) Czechoslovakia took place in 1990. Their aim was to coordinate positions on the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. The existence of the Visegrad Group dates back from February 1991, when three presidents met at the Visegrad Castle. In 1992, it was agreed to create a free trade area (CEFTA) between the countries (already four), with the common goal of transformation in order to join the European Union. In the years 1993–1998, the Visegrad Group did not engage personally the leaders of the “four” states. No summits were held. Cooperation was renewed at the Bratislava summit in 1999. The Visegrad Fund was then established, and meetings and consultations at all levels took on a regular character. The membership negotiations with the European Union required the coordination of positions.
The Group’s potential has always been far from being exploited. Poland tried to win it over for its demands in Brussels. The remaining countries, depending on the political colour of ruling forces in their countries, displayed very different levels of enthusiasm. At times, they even considered it appropriate to distance themselves from Poland (for example, in 2002-2007, when they were offended by Poland’s too strong pro-Americanism, and too strong anti-Germanism). Putin and relations with Russia have divided the Group in recent time. Orban’s pro-Russian course after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to the freezing of political cooperation within the Group.
Considerations of prestige prevented the smaller states of the Group from using Poland as a channel of influence on great European politics (through, for example, the Weimar Triangle) or the transatlantic (through close relations of Poland with the USA). Three countries always had a problem with the size of Poland and its conflicting (as during the PiS government) policy towards Berlin, Paris and Brussels. They did not want the region’s policy as pars pro toto to be equated with the views of Warsaw. The Group’s potential in developing infrastructure projects in regional cooperation remains unused.
PiS diplomacy boasted of initiating the so-called Lublin Triangle, i.e. the format of consultations between Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania. In fact, it is only a renewal of intensive contacts with these countries, which took place during the presidential term of Aleksander Kwasniewski and the governments of Miller and Belka. It was Kwaśniewski who started and implemented the so-called the Riga Initiative to help the region orbit towards Brussels. During the rule of the PO and PSL, attempts were made to start even the so-called Königsberg Triangle.
Poland recognized the Three Seas Initiative as its regional priority during the PiS rule. Its first meeting (at the invitation of the presidents of Poland and Croatia) took place in 2015 in New York (on the occasion of the session of the UN General Assembly). The Three Seas Initiative embraces 12 countries (located at the junction of the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas). The participation of the US President in the Warsaw Three Seas Summit in 2017 confirmed the strong American encouragement and (political) support for the Initiative. And yet it is a constellation consisting only of members of the European Union.
The goals of the project are declaratively technical: cooperation in the field of energy, logistics and transport as well as IT and telecommunications. The Investment Fund was established. But, despite the fact that the US blessing continues over the Initiative (President Biden spoke remotely to the participants of the Three Seas Summit in 2021), the results are not quite visible. And, after all, all its added value will be based on how much it will be possible not only to mobilize the European Union to pay more attention to the region, but also to attract other (read: American) funds for development in addition to EU funds. Without significant projects, the Initiative will turn out to be a political empty shell, like the Central European Initiative and its alikes (for example in the Western Balkans).
The most important vehicle for political and diplomatic cooperation for Poland was the Weimar Triangle, initiated in 1991 by ministers Skubiszewski, Genscher and Dumas. It helped Poland bring its point of view to the awareness of European decision-makers before they started shaping their own decisions. It functioned well not only at the level of political summits, but also at the working levels of diplomacy. Sometimes Poland could feel offended by the motivational and didactic use of it by Germany and France. Working consultations of the Triangle were preceded by bilateral talks between Germany and France, on which not only the most important topics were discussed, but also a joint message to Poland was coordinated. However, The Weimar Triangle gave Poland an insight into the cuisine of European politics. The destructive foreign policy of PiS brought about the freeze of the activities of the Triangle and left Poland out of the privileged consultative circle.
Subregional formats are useful not only in Europe. Even if they raise suspicions about the motives for their creation and doubts about their internal balance. Any even secondary chat format is good. The more so as involvement in subregional cooperation may generate new, positive diplomatic energy, especially in smaller countries.
The numerous formats of subregional cooperation that emerged in the 1990s are often referred to as the cinderellas of European politics. They did not generate significant political quality. They became routinized, lost their freshness, and were unable to create projects that would mobilize political and public attention. But they did not do any harm.
While serving in the years 2010-2014 as the head of the political planning directorate at the Council of Europe, I wanted to introduce my fellow bureaucrats to the world of intellectual reflection. In those years I organized series of debates (about democracy, about Europe, about civilization challenges) with the participation of eminent figures from the world of science, literature and diplomacy. Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Peter Singer and Iwan Krastew came to Strasbourg. There was Viktor Yerofeyev and Yuri Andrukhovych. There was Martti Ahtisaari and Adam D. Rotfeld. And others, no less outstanding. I combined useful with pleasant, because these visits also gave me the opportunity to meet in private with people whom I appreciated and wanted to meet, because in my professional life so far I have not always succeeded.
It was in Strasbourg that Zygmunt Bauman recalled his thesis that the centrality of Central Europe for the whole of Europe results not so much from geography as from the unique experience in building the identity of ethnic communities in isolation from administrative entities. Europe, under the influence of growing migratory flows, was becoming a place of trembling among diasporas. And the best that Central Europe can give of itself is the memory of promoting separate cultural identities in isolation from borders and administrative divisions. The problem, of course, is that collective memory is not eidetic, and Central Europe has rather superseded this memory and since the 1990s has followed the path of strengthening ethnic homogeneity. The experiences of the Visegrad Group and the Central European Initiative show that it is not easy to renew a subregional community. Some of the countries in the region have at least one eye on Western Europe as the patron saint of their better fate. And they treat the Central European identity as a sign of handicap, and in the worst case, they are scared by the ghost of the Polish tendency to find itself with loggerheads with Germany, or with Russia, and entangling them in completely unnecessary mishaps.
My guests in Strasbourg contributed, sometimes quite involuntarily, to raising my reputation in the eyes of my fellow bureaucrats and fellow diplomats. President Ahtisaari contributed the most. In a private conversation, I admitted to him that I had the opportunity to be introduced to him when he was visiting Poland in 1997. Later in the conference room, starting his lecture after my introduction, he started calling me “my friend Piotr”, suggesting our old acquaintance. These were, of course, words of conventional courtesy, but the audience took them with all seriousness. Nevertheless, Ahtisaari’s demonstration of the power of persuasion with which such conventions can be expressed has become for me an unattainable model.
It saddened me, although it was not surprising, that we had sometimes quite problems with attendance at these debates. The great names of European sociology and history were anonymous figures for many officials, and meeting them was a way out of the comfort zone of a computer screen and a keyboard with a mouse. Sometimes some colleagues even tried to disturb my project. When Daniel Cohn-Bendit was about to debate Europe, a group of workers petitioned to block the meeting. With his statements from many years ago, he was to lose his moral title to speak in the walls of the Palace of Europe. They achieved quite the opposite effect. The hall was bursting at the seams, and Cohn-Bendit captured the audience, which forced the conversation to be extended to almost nighttime.
