The Experience of Czech-Slovak Diplomatic Cooperation in the Context of the European Integration of Ukraine

Abstract

The contemporary history of the Czech Republic’s and the Slovak Republic’s formation asindependent European states has a meaningful specificity, compared to other Central European countries and post-Soviet states. First, in the early 1990s, against the backdrop of the former socialist federations’ «balkanization», the Czech and Slovak peoples and their political elites demonstrated the possibility of a civilized, peaceful and evolutionary self-dissolution of the Czech-Slovak federative union and the declaration of independence by the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Second, the cessation of the Czech-Slovak federative union and the declaration of independence by Czechia and Slovakia took place on the basis and within the framework of the existing constitutional norms and laws. And thirdly, when still in the federation, the Czech and Slovak parties were in advance preparing conditions for the full functioning of national statehood from the first days of independence of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic and the legal and contractual basis for their further close inter-state cooperation.

Keywords: Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, diplomatic cooperation, EU, NATO, Europeanintegration of Ukraine