From Visegrad to CEFTA. Potential and limits of the new integration processes in Central Eastern Europe

by Michela Campani

The following documents are a witness of the effort made by the leaders of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia after the 1989 revolutions in Central Eastern Europe in order to achieve a wide and stable cooperation between their governments. The reasons wich pushed the leaders of those countries to begin this project must be found mainly in their perception of deep uncertainty wich stood above the European political scenery between the end of 1990 and the beginning of the year 1991. On one hand the process of relaxation between Eastern and Western Europe, which reached the climax with the fall of the Berlin wall, had facilitated the removal of those countries from the sovietic sphere of influence. On the other hand their strategic and military security did not seem to be sure at all.