Development Relations between the Visegrád Four and Georgia: Jumping on the Bandwagon?

After the Revolution of Roses in 2003, Georgia emerged as the prime candidate for democratic institution building. The Visegrád countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), themselves emerging as new donors of foreign aid and as “champions of democracy” at the time, all showed strong interest in assisting the consolidation of Georgia’s new democracy, and have channeled relatively substantial amounts of aid to the country, both directly for supporting democratic institutions, but also for more “traditional” development projects. More than ten years have passed since, but no research has as of yet attempted to uncover the dynamics, actual contents, and relevance of V4 democracy assistance to Georgia. The aim of the paper therefore is to map V4 assistance to Georgia, and assess how well V4 aid was aligned with Georgia’s development priorities, and how relevant it was in strengthening Georgian democracy.