Central Europe's youth joins forces to increase cooperation among Visegrad citizens

Students, graduates, young professionals and NGO leaders of Central European countries came together in Warsaw this week to discuss the current challenges of Visegrad co-operation, established between Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary four years ago. Radio Polonia went along to the 5th Visegrad Youth Conference, organised by the Young Diplomats organization and the 'Centre for Europe' foundation.

Seventy participants from Central European countries constituting the V4 or Visegrad Youth Association as well as observers from other European countries have come to Warsaw to strengthen existing cooperation of students' and NGO organizations across the borders. By initiating the project the Young Diplomats' Centre managed to shift the Visegrad co-operation from the governmental level to the level of young people in the 4 countries. This year, the conference was back in Warsaw, where the whole project began in 2001. Participants are full of hope and expectations of even more efficient cooperation:

"I'm Johannes from Zurich, Switzerland and I'm representing the Erasmus Student Network, sections that work all over Europe and also very strongly for the Visegrad states. And that's why we want to get to know people, to set up a network, how we can improve our work in the Visegrad states."

"My name is Daniella Csizmadia. I'm from Pecs, Hungary, from an institution which is called Europe International House and it belongs to the local, the county council and the university. Also my institution has several projects which involve the cooperation of people from the Visegrad countries. So, the reason why I'm here is to build more connections with different organizations and different individuals as well as from these countries, which we can hopefully involve in our future project."

"I'm Lucas Milan and I'm from Slovakia. I met Paul and the Erasmus organizers in Olsztyn. It was the contact making seminar of YAF program of the European Union, and they invited me to participate in this conference."

Petr Just from the Czech Republic who has been involved in the V4 cooperation since the beginning, says this cooperation has been really fruitful and absolutely necessary to the four different countries with similar problems to solve and tasks to deal with.

"I think the biggest success is that we are still alive. As it was mentioned, it's a four year cooperation among four nations and we try to find things that connect us and try to develop them. We have the same or a similar past, we have the same or similar programs and, I think, for let's say, discipline that I specialize in comparative politics. There is a lot of comparison in the political system, political development and the development of society and so on. So, I think our common past gives us the ties into the future."

Pawel Palka gives their activities seven out of ten!

"We have very many different projects - international ones, which were financed from international sources. For example, the Visegrad Yearbook. So, we published the book in volume of 4,000 copies, and there were 30 authors - young scientists, students and previous students from different universities from the Visegrad countries. So, we were able to run such projects. We also created a stable partnership, former cooperation called Visegrad Youth Confederation. So student organizations which in many cases are perceived as not very professional. In our case, it is was not too hard to be professional, to such a point that they were able to sustain and develop cooperation for four years. And these are organizations from four countries. So they proved that they were able to act internationally."

Now within the next days of workshops and seminars the young participants from central European states are going to exchange their experiences and set good basis for further cooperation in NGO management, Fund Raising and NGO position in future European Funds Programmes.