Civic Energy Self-Defense in the Visegrad Gruop

Authors: Jan Mazač, Dániel Muth, Matúš Mišík, Lukáš Tichý, Paweł Żuk

In: Civic Energy Self-Defense in the Visegrad Gruop. Bratislava: Comenius University, September 2024

Abstract

The war in Ukraine has triggered several different psychological, social, and economic reactions in societies. In the socio-economic aspect, the armed conflict in Ukraine evokes a sense of financial and social threat in many European societies. Among the main reasons for unrest in the economic area is the concern about energy security and price of energy that started in connection with economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and spiked as the consequence of the Russian invasion. To examine these challenges in the Visegrad Group (V4) countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – the International Visegrad Fund supported project entitled “Civic energy self-defence in the shadow of the war in Ukraine: grassroots energy activities in V4”. This project was implemented by researchers from universities and think-tanks of all four countries and this report is one of its outputs. It presents findings from our empirical research conducted in early 2024. After this short introduction, four chapters discuss results of research conducted in individual countries. Conclusion summarizes the main findings and aggregates them for the whole Visegrad Group. Besides this report the project’s outputs include also four policy briefs with a short summary of our findings and policy recommendations. These policy briefs are in English language, but also all four national languages (Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and Slovak) can be found on project web pages.