Ethnic Minorities as Cross-Border Cooperation Actors  in Visegrad Group Countries and Ukraine

Myroslava LENDEL

Abstract: This article examines ethnic minorities as actors of cross-border co­operation (CBC) in the Visegrad Group countries and Ukraine. It asks how ter­ritorial concentration, institutional frameworks and geopolitical conditions shape minority agency in border regions. The study uses a qualitative compara­tive design combining demographic evidence, programme-level data from Interreg, analysis of Euroregions and European Groupings of Territorial Coop­eration (EGTCs), policy documents and secondary academic literature. Three propositions guide the analysis: territorially concentrated minorities can convert linguistic and social resources into cross-border social capital; EU membership increases the institutionalization of this participation; and wartime conditions simultaneously constrain formal cooperation and increase the value of minority networks for resilience. The findings show that minorities act as cultural media­tors, institutional intermediaries, socioeconomic networkers, heritage actors and, in the Ukrainian case, resilience actors. In the Visegrad countries, these functions are more frequently embedded in municipalities, regional authorities, EGTCs, Euroregions and EU-funded programmes, whereas in Ukraine they de­pend more strongly on universities, civil society, community organizations and informal networks. The article identifies a persistent problem of “institutional invisibility”: minority participation is substantial but rarely recorded as such in programme databases. The comparison demonstrates that the principal differ­ence between the V4 and Ukraine is institutional rather than demographic. Mi­nority communities add value by sustaining trust, continuity of ties, local devel­opment and European integration, but their agency is conditioned by adminis­trative capacity, minority policies, kin-state relations and, in Ukraine, war and securitization.

Keywords: cross-border cooperation, ethnic minorities, Visegrad Group, Ukraine, border regions

Introduction

Cross-border cooperation (CBC) has become an important instrument of European territorial integration, especially in regions where economic interdependence, historical legacies and cultural ties intersect. Contempo­rary CBC is no longer limited to in­dividual projects: it combines territo­rial cohesion, multi-level governance, mobility and network-based forms of regional development. Border re­gions therefore function simultane­ously as administrative margins and as spaces in which European integra­tion is translated into everyday inter­action¹.

Ethnic minorities are particularly relevant in this setting. Historical border changes in Central and East­ern Europe left many communities territorially concentrated close to present state borders. Shared lan­guage, family ties, cultural institu­tions and long-term interpersonal networks may reduce the social costs of cooperation and facilitate commu­nication between actors operating in different legal and administrative systems. Yet minority participation is not automatically integrative. Kin-state policies, disputes over language and education, and competing inter­pretations of sovereignty can politi­cize the same networks that other­wise support cooperation².

The Visegrad Group and Ukraine provide a useful comparative setting. Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slo­vakia participate fully in EU Cohe­sion Policy and European Territorial Cooperation, while Ukraine engages through Interreg NEXT and other external-border instruments. The contrast has become sharper since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has combined stronger border securitization with unprecedented humanitarian, migra­tion and local-government coopera­tion.

The article addresses the follow­ing main question: how do ethnic minorities function as actors of CBC in the Visegrad Group countries and Ukraine, and which institutional con­ditions enable or constrain their par­ticipation? Six operational questions concern their roles, institutional embeddedness, differences between the V4 and Ukraine, the balance be­tween bottom-up and state-mediated action, political and security con­straints, and the added value gener­ated for border regions.

Three hypotheses structure the analysis. H1: the relevance of minor­ities for CBC depends less on their national demographic share than on territorial concentration and the den­sity of cross-border social networks. H2: minority participation is ex­pected to be more strongly institu­tionalized in the V4 countries than in Ukraine because EU membership provides denser and more stable gov­ernance structures. H3: under war­time conditions, minority networks are expected to acquire an enhanced resilience function, even as securiti­zation constrains some forms of cross-border interaction.

Theoretical Framework and State of the Art

The analytical framework com­bines multi-level governance, trans­nationalism, territorial approaches to border regions and social-capital the­ory. Multi-level governance is useful because CBC distributes authority and resources across supranational, national, regional and local levels rather than locating cooperation within a single hierarchy. The devel­opment of Euroregions, Interreg and EGTCs illustrates how territorial cooperation has become embedded in governance arrangements that trans­cend state borders³.

A relational approach comple­ments this institutional perspective. Cross-border regions are produced not only by formal agreements but also by recurrent flows of people, information and resources. Mobility, commuting, education, entrepreneur­ship and cultural exchange create functional spaces whose intensity cannot be inferred from administra­tive boundaries alone. Within such spaces, minorities may operate as carriers of transnational social capi­tal: linguistic competence, interper­sonal trust and durable cross-border contacts can be mobilized for coop­eration⁴.

This perspective is particularly important because minority agency often remains hidden inside broader institutional categories. Municipali­ties, schools, cultural centres, univer­sities and NGOs may operate in mi­nority-populated territories without being classified as “minority actors”. Malloy’s analysis of minorities as creators of new political spaces and studies of ethnicity in cross-border regions suggest that minority com­munities can connect local identities with broader governance networks. Their contribution therefore concerns not only minority rights but also the capacity of border regions to cooper­ate⁵.

At the same time, the literature emphasizes ambivalence. Kin-state engagement can provide scholar­ships, cultural resources and institu­tional support, but it can also gener­ate political tensions when external support intersects with citizenship, language or sovereignty disputes. The border is thus both an oppor­tunity structure and a mechanism of control. This is especially visible at the EU’s external borders, where asymmetries of funding, administra­tive capacity and mobility regimes remain significant⁶.

The existing literature is frag­mented in three respects. First, CBC studies still privilege programmes and institutions over socially embed­ded actors. Second, minority studies focus predominantly on identity, rights and representation rather than on minorities as contributors to ter­ritorial cooperation. Third, compara­tive research covering the V4 and Ukraine remains limited, particularly under wartime conditions. This arti­cle links these strands by treating minorities as connective actors situ­ated between formal governance and everyday cross-border practices.

Methodology

The study applies a qualitative comparative case-study design cov­ering Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Czechia and Ukraine, with particular attention to Zakarpattia. The cases share a Central European historical and geographical context but differ in EU membership, institutional capac­ity and exposure to war. This most-similar-systems logic allows institu­tional differences to be assessed against a relatively comparable re­gional background.

The empirical material combines four groups of sources. First, demo­graphic and mobility data are used to identify territorial concentration and cross-border movement. Second, programme-level evidence from Interreg and Interreg NEXT is used to assess the scale and thematic structure of cooperation. Third, the study examines permanent or semi-permanent institutional forms, in­cluding Euroregions, EGTCs, re­gional authorities, municipalities and development agencies. Fourth, aca­demic studies and policy documents are used to interpret minority partici­pation, kin-state engagement, legal conditions and wartime transfor­mation.

The analysis does not attempt to calculate a precise “minority share” of CBC projects. Such a calculation would be methodologically mislead­ing because programme databases normally classify beneficiaries by legal form, not ethnic affiliation. In­stead, minority participation is identi­fied through territorial location, in­stitutional profile, project content and documented links to minority-popu­lated communities. Triangulation is therefore essential.

The main limitation follows from the same data structure: institutional invisibility makes minority participa­tion easier to demonstrate qualita­tively than to measure quantitatively. Ukrainian demographic data create an additional limitation because the 2001 census remains the last full census benchmark. The analysis therefore combines official data with more recent sociological and policy evidence and treats demographic estimates cautiously.

Results: Territorial Concentra­tion and Mobility

The evidence supports H1: na­tional-level demographic shares alone provide a poor indicator of minority relevance for CBC. What matters more is spatial concentration in border districts and the persistence of linguistic and social ties across borders. In Slovakia, more than 420,000 people identified as Hun­garian in the 2021 census, with the strongest concentration in southern districts adjacent to Hungary. Re­search using broader indicators of language and secondary identity sug­gests that the socially Hungarian-affiliated population may be larger than primary census identification indicates. In Hungary, the gap be­tween census declarations and soci­ological estimates is particularly visi­ble for Roma communities, demon­strating the general methodological limits of ethnicity statistics^7,8.

Zakarpattia represents the clearest Ukrainian example. The 2001 census recorded 151,500 Hungarians, or 12.1% of the oblast population, alongside Romanian, Slovak, Roma and other communities. Although these figures are dated, later surveys confirm continued territorial concen­tration of minority communities in municipalities close to Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. This spatial pattern is more relevant to CBC than the minority share in Ukraine as a whole.

Mobility reinforces these connec­tions. Before 2022, Ukrainian labour migration had already produced dense family and employment net­works in Poland, Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia. After the full-scale invasion, mobility acquired a hu­manitarian dimension and then grad­ually evolved into a medium-term system of labour-market, educational and municipal integration. By 2026, millions of displaced Ukrainians re­mained in Europe, while Central Eu­ropean states continued to host par­ticularly large populations relative to their own size. For CBC analysis, this means that border regions are not simply territories adjacent to a line; they are mobility infrastructures in which recurrent movements generate social relationships and institutional demand⁹.

Roles and Institutional Embeddedness of Minorities

The empirical material identifies five recurring roles of minorities in CBC. First, they act as cultural medi­ators by sustaining bilingual commu­nication, heritage practices and edu­cational exchange. Second, they op­erate as institutional intermediaries between local communities and mu­nicipalities, regional authorities, Euroregions or project partnerships. Third, they support socioeconomic networking in tourism, local prod­ucts, labour markets and small-scale entrepreneurship. Fourth, they pre­serve shared borderland heritage. Fifth, in wartime Ukraine they in­creasingly function as resilience ac­tors through translation, humanitarian coordination and support for dis­placed people.

The Slovakia–Hungary border demonstrates how these functions become embedded in mature pro­gramme structures. In 2014-2020 the programme supported 167 projects, with EUR 147.30 million in ERDF funding; the largest groups concerned nature and culture, institutional coop­eration and employment. These cate­gories do not identify ethnic benefi­ciaries, yet much implementation occurs in southern Slovakia and northern Hungary, where Hungarian-speaking communities provide lin­guistic continuity and dense munici­pal and cultural networks¹⁰.

Permanent governance structures deepen this institutionalization. The Ister-Granum and Pons Danubii EGTCs connect municipalities across the Slovak-Hungarian border and create durable platforms for tourism, mobility, local development, services and cultural cooperation. Their im­portance lies less in being “minority institutions” than in institutionalizing cooperation in territories where mi­nority presence and bilingualism are part of everyday governance. This confirms the broader argument that stable cross-border institutions can convert local social capital into long-term governance capacity¹¹.

Euroregions perform a related but more flexible function. The Carpa­thian Euroregion, established in 1993, connects territories in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine. Its project and small-project mechanisms have enabled munici­palities, schools, museums, cultural organizations and NGOs to partici­pate in cross-border initiatives even when they lack the capacity for large infrastructure projects. Such mecha­nisms are particularly relevant for minority associations because they lower entry barriers and support peo­ple-to-people cooperation.

The Poland–Ukraine programme shows the scale of contemporary cooperation under wartime condi­tions. The 2021-2027 programme database listed 79 selected projects and 206 project partners in August 2026, covering environment, health, tourism, cooperation, borders and accessibility. Heritage initiatives in­herited from earlier programming periods, including cross-border wooden-architecture and Carpathian cultural projects, demonstrate how local identities can be incorporated into territorial development without projects being formally labelled as minority-oriented¹².

The central analytical finding is therefore “institutional invisibility”. Minorities are embedded in CBC, but usually through legal entities catego­rized as municipalities, universities, schools, NGOs, cultural institutions or regional authorities. Official pro­gramme statistics consequently un­derestimate their social contribution. The evidence supports RQ2 by showing extensive but predominantly indirect institutional embeddedness.

V4–Ukraine Comparison and Bottom-Up Dynamics

The comparison supports H2. Mi­nority participation in the V4 coun­tries operates within a denser institu­tional ecosystem created by EU membership, long-term Interreg ex­perience, EGTC legislation, regional administrative capacity and diversi­fied access to European funding. These conditions reduce dependence on individual activists or single pro­jects and make cross-border relations more continuous¹³.

Ukraine participates increasingly in European programmes but remains outside the full Cohesion Policy framework. Decentralization has strengthened municipalities, yet ad­ministrative and financial asymme­tries remain significant. Minority organizations and smaller communi­ties often depend on intermediary institutions such as universities, de­velopment agencies and experienced NGOs to prepare applications and manage international partnerships. The difference is thus not a lack of willingness to cooperate but unequal institutional opportunity structures.

This asymmetry also changes the balance between bottom-up and top-down action. In the V4, bottom-up initiatives are frequently absorbed into formal structures: municipal partnerships, EGTCs, Euroregions, cultural institutions and programme-funded networks. In Ukraine, partic­ularly in Zakarpattia, family ties, minority associations, churches, schools, universities and personal networks play a more visible com­pensatory role. Small Project Funds and Visegrad Fund grants are im­portant precisely because they con­nect formal funding with local initia­tive.

Minority associations illustrate this hybrid model. Organizations representing Hungarians in Slovakia and Zakarpattia, Ukrainians and Lemkos in Poland, and other national communities maintain cultural events, educational exchanges, herit­age activities and contacts with kin-state institutions. Their cross-border role cannot be reduced to identity preservation: they also create inter­personal continuity and local knowledge that formal institutions can mobilize. At the same time, bot­tom-up cooperation should not be romanticized. Without legal frame­works, public funding and adminis­trative support, many initiatives re­main temporary and dependent on individual leaders.

The evidence therefore points to a model of co-production. State and EU frameworks create resources, legal opportunities and institutional continuity, while local actors provide trust, legitimacy and the everyday substance of cooperation. The rela­tive weight of these dimensions dif­fers across the cases: formal institu­tions are more prominent in the V4 countries, whereas socially embed­ded networks assume greater func­tional importance in Ukraine, partic­ularly under conditions of institu­tional asymmetry and war.

Constraints, War and Added Value

Minority agency is constrained by political, legal and security factors. Administrative complexity affects smaller organizations across the re­gion, but the most sensitive con­straints concern the politicization of minority rights and kin-state rela­tions. Hungarian-Ukrainian disputes over language and education demon­strate how local minority questions can become linked to bilateral rela­tions and EU accession. European monitoring has encouraged legisla­tive adaptation in Ukraine while also keeping minority rights within a highly visible political agenda¹⁴.

War intensifies these tensions. Border controls, mobilization, demo­graphic displacement and security concerns can reduce mobility and make transnational contacts more politically sensitive. At the same time, the Ukrainian case supports H3: crisis increases the practical value of pre-existing cross-border networks. Research on Ukrainian war migrants in Slovakia shows that municipali­ties, civil-society organizations and community networks became mutu­ally dependent in humanitarian and integration assistance. Minority-linked linguistic skills and interper­sonal contacts can therefore become resources for crisis governance¹⁵.

The added value identified in RQ6 operates through four mecha­nisms. The first is trust-building. Cross-border projects require cooper­ation across different legal and ad­ministrative systems; shared lan­guage and repeated interaction can reduce uncertainty and transaction costs. The second is continuity. Mi­nority networks often predate current programmes and can survive inter­ruptions in funding or changes in political leadership. The third is local development: cultural heritage, tour­ism, education and local-product initiatives transform cultural re­sources into economic and institu­tional assets. The fourth is European integration. By connecting munici­palities, schools, universities and civil society across borders, minori­ties contribute to the practical Euro­peanization of border regions.

This contribution is nevertheless conditional. Minority networks are most productive when they are con­nected to inclusive public institutions rather than isolated in parallel ethnic structures. Conversely, where minor­ity questions become securitized or instrumentalized by state actors, the same transnational ties can generate distrust. The added value of minori­ties should therefore be understood as a governance resource that requires supportive institutional conditions.

Discussion

The comparative findings suggest that ethnic minorities should be con­ceptualized neither as passive benefi­ciaries of CBC nor as autonomous transnational actors operating outside the state. Their most important func­tion is connective: they link formal institutions with social networks and translate between administrative, linguistic and cultural environments.

This interpretation refines institu­tion-centred approaches to CBC. Interreg, EGTCs and Euroregions remain indispensable because they provide resources and legal continu­ity, but their effectiveness depends on locally embedded actors. Conversely, social capital alone cannot substitute for administrative capacity. The most resilient border regions combine in­stitutionalized cooperation with dense people-to-people relations.

The V4–Ukraine comparison also demonstrates that institutional strength changes the visibility of mi­nority agency. In the V4, minority participation is often normalized within formal territorial governance and therefore becomes less visible as “minority participation”. In Ukraine, weaker institutionalization and war­time disruption make informal net­works more visible and strategically important. This produces a paradox: minorities may be less formally rep­resented in Ukrainian CBC structures while performing more immediately indispensable mediation and resili­ence functions.

The study therefore supports all three hypotheses, although with im­portant qualifications. Territorial concentration matters when it is ac­companied by active cross-border networks; EU membership promotes institutionalization but does not au­tomatically guarantee minority repre­sentation; and war simultaneously constrains cooperation and increases the practical value of minority-based networks for resilience. These quali­fications reinforce the central argu­ment that minority agency is rela­tional and context-dependent rather than an automatic consequence of ethnic proximity.

Conclusions

The study demonstrates that eth­nic minorities are structurally rele­vant actors of cross-border coopera­tion in the Visegrad Group countries and Ukraine. Their importance is shaped less by national demographic weight than by territorial concentra­tion, linguistic continuity and the density of social and institutional networks in border regions.

Minorities perform multiple func­tions: cultural mediation, institutional intermediation, socioeconomic net­working, heritage preservation and resilience-building. In the V4 coun­tries these roles are more frequently embedded in mature governance structures, while in Ukraine they remain more dependent on commu­nity networks and intermediary or­ganizations. This difference reflects institutional asymmetry rather than a weaker capacity or willingness of Ukrainian minorities to cooperate.

A key methodological conclusion is that existing programme statistics systematically obscure minority par­ticipation because beneficiaries are recorded by legal status rather than social identity. Future research should therefore combine programme databases with territorial and organi­zational mapping and, where possi­ble, interviews with local actors.

For policy, the findings imply that minority inclusion should not be con­fined to cultural policy. Small Project Funds, capacity-building for local organizations, inclusive regional planning and stronger participation in permanent CBC structures can trans­form minority social capital into broader territorial benefits. In war­time and post-war Ukraine, these resources are particularly relevant for resilience, reconstruction and Euro­pean integration.

Notes

• Eduardo Medeiros (ed.), European Territorial Cooperation: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to the Process and Impacts of Cross-Border and Transnational Cooperation in Europe, Springer, Cham, 2018; Andrea Noferini, Matteo Berzi, Francesco M. Camonita and Antoni Durà, “Cross-border cooperation in the EU: Euroregions amid multilevel governance and re-territorialization”, European Planning Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2020, pp. 35-56.
• Myra A. Waterbury, “Making citizens beyond the borders: nonresident ethnic citizenship in post-communist Europe”, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 61, No. 4, 2014, pp. 36-49; Szabolcs Pogonyi, Extra-Territorial Ethnic Politics, Discourses and Identities in Hungary, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017, and Tove H. Malloy, “Creating new spaces for politics? The role of national minorities in building capacity of cross-border regions”, Regional & Federal Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2010, pp. 335-351; Thomas Faist, The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000.
• Markus Perkmann, “Cross-border regions in Europe: significance and drivers of regional cross-border co-operation”, European Urban and Regional Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2003, pp. 153–171; Eduardo Medeiros, cit., and Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, “Unraveling the Central State, but How? Types of Multi-level Governance”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 2, 2003, pp. 233-243.
• Frédéric Durand and Antoine Decoville, “A multidimensional measurement of the integration between European border regions”, Journal of European Integration, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2020, pp. 163-178; Olle Järv, Håvard W. Aagesen, Tuomas Väisänen and Samuli Massinen, “Revealing mobilities of people to understand cross-border regions: insights from Luxembourg using social media data”, European Planning Studies, Vol. 31, No. 8, 2023, pp. 1754-1775.
• Tove H. Malloy, cit.; Ahmed Bakry and Anna Growe, “Spatial effect of ethnicity on cross-border regions. Comparative analysis for a cultural aspect based on territorial and network perspectives: the cases of the EU Basque and Upper Rhine border regions”, European Planning Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2, 2024, pp. 345-367.
• Myra A. Waterbury, “National mino-rities in an era of externalization: kin-state citizenship, European inte-gration, and ethnic Hungarian minority politics”, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 64, No. 5, 2017, pp. 228-241; Szabolcs Pogonyi, cit.
• Gábor Kertesi and Gábor Kézdi, A cigány népesség Magyarországon: Dokumentáció és adattár, Socio-typo, Budapest, 1998.
• Gabriel Harrach, “Main Demographic Characteristics of Hungarians in Slovakia: Insights from the 2021 Census”, Hungarian Journal of Minority Studies, Vol. 7, 2024, pp. 53–89; Alexander Chvorostov, Ladislav Macháček, Hans-Georg Heinrich and Olga Alekseeva, The Hungarian Minority in Slovakia, ENRI-East Research Report No. 13, 2011.
• Eurostat, “4.33 million under temp-orary protection in March 2026”, 8 May 2026, https://ec.europa.eu/euro-stat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d-dn-20260508-1, (accessed on 30.08.2026).
• Interreg Slovakia–Hungary, “Summary of funded projects / Infographics”, https://www.skhu.eu/ funded-proje-ts/infographics, (accessed on 30.08.2026).
• Markus Perkmann, cit.; Tove H. Malloy, op. cit.
• Interreg NEXT Poland–Ukraine 2021–2027, “Projects database”, https://pl-ua.eu/en/projects-database/, (accessed on 30.08.2026).
• Andrea Noferini et al., cit.; Eduardo Medeiros, op. cit.
• European Commission, Ukraine Report 2024, 30 October 2024, https://enlargement.ec.europa.eu/ukraine-report-2024_en (accessed on 30 August 2026); Venice Commission, Opinion on the Law on National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine, CDL-AD (2023) 021, 12 June 2023, https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD%282023%29021-e (accessed on 30 .08.2026).
• Volodymyr V. Hnatiuk, “Ukrainian war migrants in Slovakia: the experience of civil society-local government cooperation in providing humanitarian and integration assistance 2022-2025”, Ukrainskyi Sotsium, No. 4(95), 2025, pp. 163-188.

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