19.02.2026 (Caucasian Journal). Last month, the Caucasian Journal convened our second Visegrad Four + Georgia webinar, “Academic and Scientific Cooperation; Environmental Challenges: Joint Responses,” organized in cooperation with our project partners: Arnika (Czechia), EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy (Czechia), Visegrad Insight (Poland), and the Central European Forum (Slovakia).
This webinar marked the second event within the project “Visegrad Lessons for Georgia – Overcoming Political Divides through Practical Cooperation.” To read about the first webinar in the series, click here.
Further expert discussions will follow.
Further expert discussions will follow.
▶ ქართულად: The Georgian version is here.
ACADEMIC AND SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION; ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES: JOINT RESPONSES
Alexander KAFFKA, editor-in-chief of Caucasian Journal: Good morning and good afternoon. I am Alexander Kaffka, and I will be moderating our second webinar. It's my pleasure to thank the International Visegrad Fund for supporting this project.
As we have already observed, the Visegrad Group has experienced serious political disagreements among the member states, yet cooperation has often been preserved in areas that are less politically sensitive, but still strategically vital, such as academic exchange, scientific research, and environmental policy. Georgia and the South Caucasus in general face a different political and institutional context, but similar risks – deepening polarization, fragile institutions, and shared environmental and scientific challenges.
So, my first question is how can science and the environment “survive” politics? Can we talk about a technical buffer or a non-political glue that allowed the Visegrad Group to maintain cooperation despite political disagreements?
David DONDUA: Thank you for the invitation, Alexander, and greetings to all panelists. My name is David Dondua, I am a former Georgian diplomat, now residing in Vienna. I am also chairing the EU Awareness Center – a Brussels-based think tank.
A few words on your question, whether scientific and academic cooperation can survive political turbulences. The short answer is yes. We diplomats, call it “a track to diplomacy”.
When political channels are blocked due to different reasons, then societies use other ways to bypass the political roadblocks. Georgia is now facing a growing tension with the EU and the democratic world. You know that political channels are limited and the country risks self-isolating from European networks.
And it's not just about politics; it may affect and, as far as I know, it is already affecting academic and scientific cooperation. Here, joint research exchanges, conferences, data sharing, all the things that keep services alive are becoming more and more difficult to maintain, as I know from my friends in my country. And this is where the Visegrad experience can be really useful.
And I remember in Central Europe, and particularly on the Visegrad territory, where political disagreements were serious, countries still continued working together on science and environment, and these networks managed to operate regardless of politics. And I will repeat that for Georgia, in current situation, scientific cooperation can serve as a form of, as we used to say, a track to diplomacy, a way to maintain ties with Europe when political dialogue is blocked.
AK: Thank you very much, Dato. I see that Juraj Marusiak raised his hand. Please go ahead.
Juraj MARUSIAK: Regarding the question, if there is a non-political glue between Visegrad Group countries, we can see that really Visegrad cooperation on the political level is stagnating and marginalized not only by particular governments, but also by the EU institutions.
The only things connecting Visegrad Group countries are: firstly, business, because these countries are still very close trade partners; and the second is the presence of the International Visegrad Fund. So these are two main elements of internal cohesion of Visegrad Group.
We see that without European financial and political support, Visegrad Group is not able to perform any of its projects. Visegrad Group can act as a successful actor only within the EU, not outside.
Because of tense political relations between Visegrad Group countries in the past and very radical changes in its architecture, we remember at least two models of Visegrad Group as “2+2” (two pro-European countries - Slovakia, Czechia, and two Euroskeptic countries - Hungary and Poland); as we had tense relations with Brussels, Visegrad “2+1” model after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine; and now “2+2” with Slovakia, Hungary on one side, and Czechiaand Poland on the other side. But with some changes in the attitude of Czechia towards Ukraine, we see that regardless a very low level of political communication on the peak of Visegrad Group countries and almost lack of political communication on the level of prime ministers or ministers of foreign affairs, the single group institution, International Visegrad Fund is still continuing to work, and there is no participant country saying “we shall stop financing International Visegrad Fund”. It shows persisting interest in preserving at least a certain level of non-political cooperation - the cooperation on the grassroots level, and it might become a platform for the restart of Visegrad cooperation.
Then the second thing, business. In the past, Poland had been perceived as the weakest partner of Visegrad Group in 1990s. Nowadays, Poland is gradually becoming the economic leader of the group, and Czechia and Slovakia, andCEE in general, are becoming a natural field of expansion of Polish business. For example, the projects of high-speed railways are debated at the level of Visegrad Group. And not to forget the project of the North-South gas corridor. During the last years, it has been the single successful Visegrad Group project, connecting gas pipeline systems. It is really a successful project.
But what are the limits of cooperation, especially on the level of infrastructure building? Those are finances. We see that without European financial and political support, Visegrad Group is not able to perform any of its projects. Visegrad Group can act as a successful actor only within the EU, not outside.
AK: Thank you very much, Juraj. If I mispronounce any names, please do correct me.
Václav ORCÍGR: I'm a member of the environmental NGO Arnika and also a part of the Czech Academy of Science, the Institute of Contemporary History.
I think there were some examples recently in the Czech case, especially after the new government was set up this fall. In the Czech context, we speak about big pressure on the non-governmental and civic sector, ostracization of the civic sector. And we expected this pressure to be growing also within the academic sphere.
However, what I think is important until now - within academia, the civic sector and mutual cooperation - that there is a big pro-democratic consensus. This is a very important baseline for cooperation and influence over public discussion. This is another aspect that I wanted to point out - the ability to co-create discussion and to maintain some of the important democratic values within public discussion.
This is my scientific trust that this course is extremely important in maintaining democratic culture in academia and the non-governmental sector. If we speak about the environmental sector, they need each other.
The last very recent and ongoing example is the protests against the new minister of the environment. They were organized in Prague mostly by environmental activists, but academia was involved as well. It was one of the biggest environmental protests since the Velvet Revolution. It was about 5000 people in the Prague Castle Square.
I think this is a positive signal that civil society in cooperation with academia is active, is responding to the political developments. And there is some pro-democratic baseline in both of these spheres that is maintained, that is agreed on, and provides a platform to respond to anti-democratic tendencies within the government.
Maybe to provide context, the new minister of environment is from the “MotoristsParty”. The agenda of the minister of environment is to distract the environmental sector, the legislation, and also civic society organizations, its funding, etc.
Maybe one last thing that I wanted to point out, at least this is what I perceive as a member of a non-governmental organization, is the network within civil society, within the environmental sector. We have the Green Circle, which is an association of environmental NGOs, which is able to network, coordinate, to advocate.
So there are further actors that are able to coordinate individual actors, individual organizations put together positions that stand in this opposition. So I definitely wouldn't speak about a non-political glue, rather a pro-democratic glue, which is the shared baseline. Thank you.
AK: Thank you. Ladislav, perhaps?
Ladislav MIKO: Yes, thank you very much. I'm trying to keep the perspective of our Georgian colleagues in this discussion. In some aspects, the Visegrad Group is based on different historical links that may be relevant to the South Caucasus.
First of all, two of the four countries, Czechia and Slovakia, have been one state before. That's quite a significant difference. And there are plenty of historical links here, which are persisting despite different political developments. If you follow what is happening in Czechia and Slovakia politically, it is usually just a phase shift. It is the same things happening with some delay in one or another country, but having very similar main themes.
Despite this, there are plenty of still alive, familial, social, and cultural links between the two countries, which are actually creating a good base for permanent contacts and mutual collaboration, despite differences at the political or governmental level. In science, it is particularly strong. We sometimes joke that the biggest university city of Slovakia is Brno, because there are plenty of young Slovak people studying in Czech universities.
So this is creating the scientific links for further development of a career. And this is not the case with Poland or with Hungary. This is particularly typical for Czech and Slovak relations in science and education.
And regarding the Visegrad Fund, I agree with what was said, that irrespective of the political situation, it is still working as a gluing forum for at least some parts of society. I have been part of political developments when the Visegrad Group was established by Václav Havel and others. And it was quite a long period when the Visegrad Group was a nice forum for meeting and discussing nice things. We were very long time discussing that it needs to get higher at the political level, but it was not the case.
Once the funds are simply decided and distributed by politicians, it can be a problem, and maybe it’s time to think about another framework.
I was responsible for putting a program of Visegrad meetings in the 1990s. It was very light, pleasant, often cultural or social issues. And then it started to gain importance after the entry into the EU of all the members, because it was a potential power bloc of Central Europe within the EU. And it was gaining political relevance.
But I have to say that it was much stronger between Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, not that strong for Poland. Poland was oriented more individually to Germany and other big member states, and less with Visegrad. So, the building of the unified political stronghold of Visegrad within the EU was a process, and it was not smooth.
And what we observe nowarepolitical differences in individual states, be it in relation to the Ukrainian war, or also about the overall approach to the future of the EU and participation in the European cooperation, about NATO, or relations with the USA. There is a dramatic difference between the positions of Slovakia, Poland, Hungary on these issues.
So, Visegrad is sustaining, but, in my view, it is coming back to its original state: cultural, scientific collaboration, social issues - things which are not that problematic, and then it can work further.
And the last sentence is about scientific collaboration versus before. Just very freshly, I have been successful with my team in gaining financial support for a scientific project from V4, where Slovakia, Poland, and Czechia are participating. Absolutely no problem. This collaboration works perfectly, but I just want to say that scientific collaboration within Visegrad Fund is not a dominant part. It's just a small part of what Visegrad Fund is supporting and funding. It's not like a scientific grant agency for the V4 countries, by far not. Nevertheless, it helps. There is a certain solidifying ground within Visegrad, which is not creating, but keeping and supporting the existing lines between the societies of the four countries.
AK: Thank you very much, Ladislav. I have observed at least five more raised hands. I would start with Magdalena Gora, please.
Magdalena GÓRA: Thank you very much. My name is Magdalena Gora and I'm an Associate Professor in European Studies at the Institute for European Studies at the Jagiellonian University, that you can probably see a part of behind me. And I'm also representing my institution as a Plenipotentiary for Scientific Cooperation.
I would like to propose some points concerning how my institution is approaching the cooperation within the V4, trying to navigate within changing but also impactful political dimension of it. I agree with my predecessor stressing that we maintain a very vivid, both scientific and educational, cooperation with our V4 partners.
Moreover, we expanded, and we have been doing this despite the political pressures. How? First, it's finding a space for cooperation. And sometimes we do it in highly politicized themes through first mapping the common interests between actors that we cooperate with, which are other higher education institutions or think tanks, and finding people and institutions that would like to work with us. If the cooperation is not working, then we shift it somehow. This is a semi-technocratic route, in the sense that you search for the people who are like-minded. And then you pursue the aims with those who work with this.
The second, and I think this is our approach, is going into the institutionalization. I think Vaclav mentioned this. But I would say institutionalization is even more than just building networks.
It's applying for programs, for funds that can give us more structure to cooperation, because the political pressure and the institutionalization gives you resistance, because institutions stand: As most political scientists know, they tend to stay.
If you have them even in a limited sphere, they give you a protection to some extent. One of our examples is a Master degree program that we created with four institutions. This is Master's degree program in international relations, Europe from a Visegrad perspective. It's funded continuously by Visegrad Fund to give this scholarship to the students. It's done by the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen in Czechia, the University of Pécs in Hungary, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica and us, the Jagiellonian University. And we keep mobility between the students interested in the region and between the scholars.
And since we all have that interest in maintaining this program for years, it pushes us to cooperate despite the difficulties that you may encounter on the way. The same is for the research programs. My colleague Ladislav Miko mentioned already applying for Visegrad funds.
At the moment, we have actually several different initiatives that are facilitating cooperation. For instance, there is Weave–UNISONO, an initiative by national research funding institutions. You can apply for the national funds and for the special route, which is attractive for scholars and researchers, if you have partners from those universities. So we closely cooperate with Charles University and Brno University in other constellations and networks. And this also gives us an advantage in applying for the EU-funded resources.
All of this is coming back to the studies in the interest of all of those actors. And then it pushes us to build these network alliances locally because it gives us a better position and visibility, very often in the European game for the funds.
And one last comment on this, I think one very important long-lasting impact of the Visegrad on the level of academic and scientific cooperation is that we increasingly see one-to-one significance. It was mentioned in the University of Brno case (the Slovak-Czech context) but it's the one-to-one context, and the students', teachers', and scientists' mobility.
We have different initiatives, not only Visegrad Fund for this. For instance, we have this very interesting network that is modeled a little bit on the Erasmus initiative, which is called CEEPUS. Most of you are probably familiar with it. This is Central European Exchange Program for University Studies which actually brings 15 member states in a centralized and broadly understood region, and our students are applying there yearly.
Our faculty members are annually applying for the positions in CEEPUS, building those contacts eventually and maintaining them, and making them more immune to the political pressure. You need to make them real person-to-person, based on an interest to pursue things that gives you strength. I'll stop here. Thank you very much.
AK: Thank you. I think we should welcome Veronika now.
Veronika ORAVCOVA: Similarly to Václav, I'm also from NGO sector and the Academy as well, so I have both these perspectives. And when it comes to the focus that actually is working, that is the long-term cooperation at the borders and so-called cross-border cooperation, which is supported by the EU programmes. In the environmental field, it is very fruitful, especially in the three areas. This could also be relevant for the Georgian case. The first is biodiversity protection and conservation, the second is water management and flood management, and the third is the expansion of renewable energy sources, which also includes trading electricity.
There are several important projects going on, because, as you know, the Visegrad countries are not environmental or climate leaders in EU. This is something that we have in common, that we are catching up to other Western countries. And in the political climate, the environmental topics are connected to the climate topics, which are very polarizing today.
We already heard that the “Motorists” are a part of the Czech government, and they are openly anti-climate and anti-green party. However, this is something that is mainstreaming now also in other political parties. It is not a domain of far-right or radical right or populist, or however we label it, - it is the mainstream.
But what is working is the local, regional cooperation that is working for years. And we should not forget also about the transnational cooperation of cities. There are many platforms that help cities to reach the climate neutrality targets, which is very connected to the environmental topics, because you cannot have climate without environment.
And in that regard, quite famous was the so-called Pact of Free Cities; that was between four mayors of Visegrad countries. It was during COVID-19 pandemic, but they stressed also the cooperation in the climate field. So this is something like an NGO sector that is working.
Of course, firstly, there are cities that are willing to do climate policies, but then they are also joined by others. That is an optimistic scenario, but the cities that are doing climate policies, they see the improvements mainly in air quality and dealing with heat waves. So people really see tangible effects. And this is something that can also be transposed to other countries.
AK: Thank you very much, Veronika. Professor Murman Margvelashvili, please.
Murman MARGVELASHVILI: I'm an Associate Professor of Ilia State University, and I'm also leading an energy policy and sustainability think-tank, World Experience for Georgia.
We in Georgia are used to being leaders. Some time ago, we were leaders and a beacon of democracy, although there were some flaws in that democracy.
And now, I believe, we are also leaders and we're leading in the pace of reform, which is a pretty questionable reform. To a great extent, it is consolidation of authoritarian rule, where the government and essentially one party are taking over all controls of the system. And it poses a new challenge to civil society, the scientific community, and so on. So we are not sure how we will navigate those changes and try to survive and preserve the ties with external, our partner educational and academic institutions. The change in the law of grants basically says that any money transferred from outside to inside Georgia, from any person to any person, provided this person can or intends to influence government or society, will be considered as a grant and it has to be subordinated and approved by the government. That gives the government full control of activities of non-government organizations and also cooperation programs that relate academic institutions to the outside world.
So I would suggest that it's a case study for Visegrad countries to observe Georgia and to see how we will manage to navigate these changes. And also, it can be also considered as a case study for observing what can happen if the populist or autocratic rule gets established. And what happens if the institutions get hollowed out of expertise and how it can be navigated by civil society.
We are having great challenges now. We do not know how to survive, how to continue our activities. So this turbulent environment now doesn't give us much possibility to project what will happen.
But it is definitely very interesting. So we will try to stand up to this challenge and to find a way for future. And we hope that we will have attention, support of our European and international colleagues so that we continue cooperation in a way possible. Thank you.
Once the funds are simply decided and distributed by politicians, it can be a problem, and maybe it’s time to think about another framework.
AK: Thank you very much, Professor. Lydia Gresakova, please.
Lýdia GREŠÁKOVÁ: I am a sociologist at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, but also with a Kosice non-profit studio of architecture and sociology that deals with participatory processes, often working with other NGO sectors, climate organisations, and municipalities. I like very much what has been said so far, especially by my predecessor, because everybody can feel that what is happening politically in Slovakia is very similar to what Georgia is experiencing.
But in these challenging political times, usually also civic society is getting stronger in opposition. And I think this is what's happening here. We too, in our Kosice-based collective, feel that the future is very uncertain. We don't know, for example, how this year will look like. Thanks to Visegrad Fund, the alliances are being built. For us especially, this is something that really helps us to go on further and to see that everybody is finding their own way into working in this atmosphere.
But I'm always asking, for whom are we working and with whom? Because here a lot has been said about academia, NGO sector, but what we struggle with the most are state institutions and municipalities. For example, in Visegrad projects, we are trying to strengthen their capabilities, but they are just understaffed. And there is a lot of frustration going on how to translate the new knowledge gained in the alliances into real practice.
This is still a struggle, although I'm not sure how it is in other countries, in Slovakia, almost in every city, there is a pro-climate civic organization, a collective, an NGO that is trying to build networks, and this is working very well. The solutions that municipalities currently have are very limited. But what we found out in our practice and working with other Visegrad 4 countries, which can also be helpful in our international discussions, is that in the illiberal Europe, we tend to find out hybrid solutions that are really not leftist nor right-wing, but are trying to somehow swim in between the dominant political systems quite successfully, and we somehow manage to survive very different political times.
And this hybridity is something very unique to our region, and I think it's also happening in Georgia. And this is something to think about, or something important that we need to develop, maybe map further, gain more data about how do we do it actually, that we can survive in a time where civic association is pushed to a side, but still somehow manages to continue working, gaining data and helping out in the practice, whether it is working with the municipalities in the area of climate, energy measures, building efficiency, and the creation of reserves, for example, for water or water resources or renewable energy.
AK: Thank you very much, Lydia. Filip Krenek, please.
Filip KRENEK: As a researcher, you can compare one country to another and give some recommendations and some conclusions. And I think this initial momentum that was there was carried over to the present, and we still have organizations that tend to still gravitate to one another in this space, in domains that are completely new.
We've been approached, for instance, by Slovakian or Polish electric mobility associations that they want to do things in Czechia, just because it somehow naturally works very well in this context, because the countries are in a similar socio-economic standing in European terms. And then on environmental cooperation, specifically, the geographical grounding and the shared borders create all sorts of challenges. I mean, there were issues with regard to water contamination, for instance, on the Polish-Czech border.
This is something that has to be dealt with. But then there are, of course, also positive examples where organizations or environmental organizations tend to take these trans-border issues up and work on them in a joint manner. In terms of technical collaboration, there is a higher than EU average level of collaboration.
Still within the region, there is a practice of, if there are environmental agencies, they tend to group together. Bottom line was that, of course, if you are in similar starting conditions, you face similar challenges. Of course, you want to get as much information as possible from countries facing a similar situation.
AK: As a moderator, I must apologize that we are running out of time. I was planning closing remarks, but instead, I decided to give the floor to everybody else. In case you want to add anything, please do.
David DONDUA: Alexander, I wanted to add two more points of advantages of scientific cooperation that arise in times of political turbulence. The one is in the framework of South Caucasus, where significant changes are underway.
We all know this rapprochement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Georgia cannot play a role in the political reconciliation, but it could accelerate the melting of fires by offering a platform for trilateral scientific forum, inspired exactly by the V4 model. And when political agreements still remain difficult to reach, joint research and academic exchanges can keep lines of communication open and thereby facilitating political collaboration. So it's another track to diplomacy path.
And third, last but not least, academic cooperation, scientific cooperation can also help building bridges within Georgia. In a conflict-divided country, shared challenges in environment, agriculture and disaster response create natural opportunities to engage with people on the other side of the occupation line in Abkhazia and South Ossetia with their experts.
And these discussions do not require political recognition or status negotiations. This is something I have experienced firsthand while working on conflict resolution. This is another advantage of scientific cooperation where we can borrow an example from V4.
AK: Thank you very much, Dato. I absolutely agree. Ladislav, please.
Ladislav MIKO: I think the best and strongest links across the borders are developed, irrespective of the political developments, on closely based issues. If you have particular interest of, I would say, safety of food or environmental trans-border issues, these are the things where the scientific cooperation works best and sustains the political changes. And for example, when we speak about the environmental issues, there are also regional international agreements like Danubian collaboration or Carpathian collaboration which is not only V4, but it is V4 plus Austria or some other countries.
But nevertheless, these are the platforms where, on the basis of the common interest on the particular subject of research or monitoring, there is a long-standing good cooperation that can be developed. So I am just putting that as one of the options for the Georgian case, which is to operate in so complicated political framework. The only way is something like the role of sports or culture in the past in the divided world: the science can play a very similar role, when there is a common subject.
AK: I would like to thank you very much for this exceptionally interesting discussion. Our next webinar will focus on economics and business, and I'm looking forward to seeing you in our future events.
About the participants:• Ladislav CABADA, Professor in Political Science and Czech History and Vice-Rector for Research, Quality and Development at Metropolitan University Prague, Czech Republic•• David DONDUA, Former Georgian Ambassador to NATO, OSCE, Greece, Serbia, Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, EPLO Permanent Representative to IACA, Chairman of the Board at the EU Awareness Centre, Georgia• Magdalena GÓRA, Assistant Professor, Jagiellonian University, Poland• Lýdia GREŠÁKOVÁ, Spolka.cc, researcher and publicist in the field of urban planning, Slovakia• Magda JAKUBOWSKA, Vice President and Director of Operations, the Res Publica Foundation, Poland• Filip KRENEK, Project coordinator & Analyst, EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy, Czech Republic• Murman MARGVELASHVILI, Director, World Experience for Georgia, Professor and Director Energy and Sustainability Institute, Ilia State University, Georgia• Juraj MARUSIAK, Institute of Political Science, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia• Ladislav MIKO, Advisor to the President of the Czech Republic; former Czech Minister of the Environment and senior European Commission official, Czech Republic• Robert ONDREJCSÁK, Executive Director, European Leadership Network (ELN), former Slovakia's Ambassador to the United Kingdom and State Secretary of the Ministry of Defense, Slovakia• Veronika ORAVCOVA, Researcher, Slovak Foreign Policy Association (SFPA); European Energy Conference (CEEC), Slovakia• Václav ORCÍGR, NGO Arnika, Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Science, Czech Republic• Magda PRZEDMOJSKA, Director of Operations, Visegrad Insight, Poland• Giorgi ROBAKIDZE, Executive Director, EU Awareness Centre, Georgia
• Oszkár ROGINER-HOFMEISTER, Head of the Global Europe Programme, EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy, Czech Republic• Marta SIMECKOVA, Chairwoman, Project Forum (Občianske združenie Projekt Fórum), founder, Amnesty International Slovakia, Slovakia
• Martin SKALSKÝ, Chairman, NGO Arnika, head of Center for Citizen Support programme, Czech Republic
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