United in Differences: Visegrad Contribution to EU Differentiated Integration; A Discussion on Underlying Theoretical Assumptions

The main goal of the research is to analyze how Member States of Central and Eastern Europe– and in particular the Visegrad group EU Member States (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) – have been contributing to the process of “differentiated integration” (DI) of the EU. More precisely, we seek to analyze whether these four countries – both in terms of individuals and as a consistent group – have been contributing to the “diluting” of the integration process in terms of real behaviour in EU institutions (particularly in the Council of the EU and the European Council), developing and advocating competitive visions and scenarios of the EU and, in terms of their perception by other EU Member States, as promoters of “differentiated integration”. Our research thus contributes to the recent theoretical discussion on the future of the EU integration process. In our paper, individual DI categories are presented with a detailed focus on their internal structure. Such categories will serve as ideal types, the positions of individual V4 countries.