The Future of the Normative Power Europe Concept from the Visegrad Group’s Perspective
The Future of the Normative Power Europe Concept from the Visegrad Group’s Perspective

Summary/Abstract: The European Union (EU) is becoming an independent actor of International Rela-tions. Its external activities are diverse: ranging from economic relations (mainly through the Common Commercial Policy or association agreements) to the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Also, the geographical scope of its presence is wide – from the nearest neighborhood in the European continent to the countries of Africa, Far East or South America. For this reason, in the academic as well as in the public discourse, questions are posed on the EU’s role in international relations. One of the leading concepts is an idea of the European Union as a normative power (Normative Power Europe, NPE). This article will analyze the status quo and future of the NPE concept among Visegrad countries expressed in the discourse of their po-litical elites in: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is assumed that the changing nature of the international reality in recent years, i.e. the Russi-an-Ukrainian conflict and the migration crisis undermined the dominant narration about the EU in International Relations as a Normative Power and led to new forms of expression of its international identity. Political discourse in the new member sta-tes of the EU will be analyzed in searching for an answer to the question: what is the perception of the NPE in the selected Central European countries?

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