V4 representatives discuss common security policy in Hungary's Pecs

The Europe House in Peczs, in the south of Hungary, is a type of incubator for European integration. It's part of the regional information centre on the EU, and organises integration events and projects. Representatives from the Visegrad Four - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, have met there to talk about security issues and cooperation. We spoke to the head of the Europe House, Istvan Tarrosy, about the meeting:

"On Monday, we organised the third in this year's series on security policy in a global world and the reason behind it is that in the last few years, we organised two very successful international conferences on NATO especially Hungary's membership in this organisation - the first one was right before the referendum took place in 1997 and the second one was held in March 2003, when we celebrated the fourth anniversary of Hungary's membership. We wanted to continue because we saw that people were interested in such things. Security is a crucial issue nowadays, especially if you put it in the context of global terrorism and regional cooperation has an additional dimension in that sense in today's world."

The participants of the conference were from the Visegrad countries, which have already been cooperating. What new steps can they take in the field of security policy?

"That's a very good question because the Visegrad cooperation has been running for fourteen years now. In the field of security, there is not much new according to the experts who were invited. This is because the major aims and objectives of Visegrad cooperation was to reach integration into the European Union as well as NATO and all these countries have reached that status. So, the mission has been completed in that sense and now a new dimension should be added. In terms of security, the Visegrad Four cannot do more than NATO can because that is the real framework, where you have the assets and the power in the military sense. So, there are many more things to the security dimension. For instance culture and economic things that should be thought over when you think about security and these are the issues we addressed on Monday."

So what was the message of the conference?

"Well, there were many critical voices towards the future because the mission has been completed, as I mentioned before. But if you think of the international Visegrad Fund and many of the cultural activities that are going on, or even in the field of higher education and research, there are many things left to do and the security is not as important as all these ties. What is a great challenge for the future is how to manage the regional cohesion among the four countries and how to present alternatives as a regional grouping within the EU and I think that is the one issue that these countries will need to address very seriously in the forthcoming years."