Rhetorical Strategies, Institutional Dilemmas: the Visegrád Group and the Baltic Cooperation Facing the EU and NATO Accession Process

Abstract

Academic and policy literature frequently supports the idea that the process of accession to the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization might have triggered the emergence and development of functional regional cooperation in the former communist space. In this article, using the cases of the Baltic Cooperation and Visegrád Group, I argue that, far from being enhanced by the EU and NATO enlargement processes, the regional dimension rarely found itself at ease with the institutional requisites for accession to these two Western organizations.