The International Visegrad Fund is an inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion based in Bratislava founded by the gov­ern­ments of the  Visegrad Group (V4) countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Republic of Poland and the Slovak Republic-in Štiřín on 9 June 2000.

The pur­pose of the fund is to facil­i­tate and pro­mote the devel­op­ment of closer coop­er­a­tion among cit­i­zens and insti­tu­tions in the region as well as between theV4 region and other coun­tries, espe­cially in the Western Balkan and Eastern Partnership regions. The fund operates several grant programs, and also awards individual scholarships, fellowships and artist residencies. Grant sup­port is given to original projects namely in the areas of cul­ture, sci­ence and research, youth exchanges, cross-border cooperation and tourism pro­mo­tion, as well as in other priority areas defined in calls for proposals published on the fund’s website.

The gov­ern­ing bod­ies of the fund are the Council of Ambassadors and the Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs. The exec­u­tive body of the fund is com­posed of the Executive Director and the Deputy Executive Director. The admin­is­tra­tive body of the fund is the secretariat.

The Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, which con­sists of the Ministers of the Foreign Affairs of the Visegrad Group coun­tries, is the supreme body of the fund. The conference deter­mines the amounts of annual con­tri­bu­tions and their due dates for every V4 member state, approves the rules of pro­ce­dure of the fund’s secretariat, and approves the fund’s bud­get, i.e., annual state­ments and clear­ance of the bud­get pre­sented by the Council of Ambassadors. The Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs des­ig­nates from among its mem­bers its president. This pres­i­dency is rotat­ing in the English alpha­bet­i­cal order of the names of the member states. The Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs adopts res­o­lu­tions unan­i­mously and meets at least once a year in order to esti­mate the imple­men­ta­tion of the tasks set forth in the present statute of the fund. Hungary presides over the Conference of Ministers from January 1–December 31, 2015.

The Council of Ambassadors con­sists of Ambassadors or Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the V4 member states accred­ited to the head of the state whose plenipo­ten­tiary cur­rently holds the post of the president of the Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs. The Council pre­pares pro­grams for the ses­sion of the Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs and reports on imple­men­ta­tion of the fund’s operations in the pre­ced­ing year. The council drafts pro­grams and doc­u­ments for the ses­sions of the Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, meets at least once every six months to dis­cuss what­ever is nec­es­sary for the imple­men­ta­tion of the objec­tives. The council formally approves projects selected for financ­ing and implementation.

More about The International Visegrad Fund: http://visegradfund.org/about/