The Visegrad Cooperation within the European Union is a regional organization of four Central European member states: the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. The cooperation aims to jointly represent the economic, diplomatic, and political interests of these countries and coordinate their possible actions. All four member states joined the European Union on May 1, 2004.
The Visegrad Cooperation does not have a specific headquarters. The IVF secretariat in Bratislava is the only tangible existence of the V4s. However, each year one country undertakes management and coordination of cooperation matters. The tasks of the presidency are determined in advance and evaluated at the end of the year.
The collaboration had its heyday in the mid-2010s. The governments of the Visegrad countries agreed on the main issues that determine their daily politics and public discourse, and there were no far-reaching differences of opinion that would have resulted in a serious division between the parties. However, a kind of division began to develop within the group, partly due to the fact that rule of law procedures were initiated against Hungary and Poland in the European Union, and the leadership of the two states took an increasingly characteristic stance against mainstream EU political positions.
In this regard, the relationships of the V4 countries further worsened after a change of government took place in Slovakia at the beginning of 2020 and in the Czech Republic at the end of 2021, which resulted in the coming to power of cabinets much less confrontational with EU institutions. By this time, it was already clear that V4 was actually “V2+2″.
The Ukrainian-Russian war that broke out at the end of February 2022 caused a rupture in the relations of the member states of the Visegrad Cooperation, especially in terms of how to maintain relations with Russia. The increasing isolation of Hungary due to the pro-Russian swing policy of the Orbán government, which is also represented in the EU, is already felt at the level of the V4 cooperation.
There is no official mention of the dissolution of the cooperation but Hungary is openly criticized by all the member countries, even by his formal ally Donald Tusk. Pekarová Adamová, the president of the Czech House of Representatives, believed that the V4 is dead in its current situation because while Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic have been helping Ukraine since the beginning of the war, Hungary seems lenient in the face of the Kremlin’s aggression. In several cases, policy-related V4 negotiations have been abandoned as a result of these differences of opinion.
In the EU, the Hungarians are always the last to agree to a sanctions package, ask for concessions, and threaten to not support further sanctions. They are also capable of domestically abusing the theme of war against the EU.
In the following, we will briefly analyze the results of the recent EP elections, because they can help us understand the direction in which the cooperation of the V4s can continue in the future.
Czech Republic
During the recent Czech EP elections, the populist force, former prime minister Andrej Babiš’s ANO party achieved the best result, with a total of 26.14%, thus winning 7 mandates, and their representatives joined the Patriots for Europe (PFE) party family, leaving the liberal Renew group. The party has now tuned itself to be more nationalist in terms of rhetoric and candidates.
In the Czech Republic, the current governor, Petr Fialá, has been prime minister since 2021. His party, the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), represents liberal-conservative views. During the last EP elections, it ran in a coalition named SPOLU with other parties, winning the second most votes. The SPOLU coalition achieved a total of 22.27%, thereby obtaining 6 mandates, thus sending 3 representatives to the EPP (Group of the European People’s Party) and another 3 representatives to the ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists Group).
ODS is a member of the ECR party family in the European Union, so its representatives sit in the same seat as the Italian Brothers (Fratelli d’Italia), which recently came to power, or Law and Justice (PiS), the former ruling party of Poland so nominally the parties close to the Hungarian governing Fidesz.
The governor’s party traditionally represents Eurosceptic politics, but not as radically as other Czech political forces. In the party’s communication, the resolutions related to the European Union often emphasize the preservation of sovereignty and are critical of EU policy on many issues, especially in the areas of the economy, migration, and the transparency of EU decision-making.
The next parliamentary election in the Czech Republic is due in the fall of 2025, and if the result is similar to that of the EP election in June, then Andrej Babis, who shares similar values and views with Orbán and his government, can once again begin to approach Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán within the V4 formation. With this, the current V2+2 formation could get closer to each other again, and the operation of the formation could be expected to revive again. Members of the European Parliament from the party of Viktor Orbán and Andrej Babis joined the same EP group, the newly founded Patriots for Europe (PFE), delegating a total of 18 representatives to the group.
Poland
The current Prime Minister of Poland is Donald Tusk, who took over the governor’s seat in December 2023 from Morawiecki, who is a member of PiS (Party of Law and Justice) and served as Prime Minister from 2017-2023. His party is a conservative, right-wing political party in Poland.
Tusk’s party is a more centrist, social-liberal political party based on the new statute of the Civic Platform in Poland, formerly liberal-conservative, currently effective from September 18, 2021. They are a member of the Group of the European People’s Party (EPP). The party ran in the EP elections in a coalition with its allies. In their campaign, they emphasized the importance of EU integration.
Donal Tusk’s centrist party won its first election victory over a right-wing populist party in a decade, garnering the most votes in the 2024 EP election. However, the results also show that his advantages are small, and that support for the extreme right is increasing.
The second-best result in the EP election was won by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which was in power from 2015 to last year, which result shows that despite the corruption scandals that broke out during the years of their government, the conservative worldview they represent is still attractive to many Polish voters. They received 36.16% of the votes, thus winning 20 mandates. Their representatives joined the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR).
The formation of V4s can currently be interpreted as V2+2, one pair of which is given by the current Czech Prime Minister and Poland’s Donald Tusk, even though the Czech Prime Minister’s party has delegated its representatives to the ECR party, while the Polish Prime Minister’s has delegated its representatives to the EPP. They both stand for the values of the European Union and in Poland, after the election of Tusk, it was possible to correct the problems that had previously initiated the rule of law procedure against the country.
In Poland, the next parliamentary elections are expected to be held in the fall of 2028, as it is still quite far away, it is difficult to say whether the growing right-wing support will result in the return of PiS, but if it does, Poland may also join the current Slovak-Hungarian Prime Minister duo, who increasingly represent views within the EU that are more Eurosceptic and emphasize the strengthening of member states’ powers.
Slovakia
The EP election in Slovakia was a big test of how the country would react after the shock of the presidential election in March and the assassination attempt on Robert Fico.
The election campaign was unusually “lukewarm“, partly because people were also tired of the many elections, as June will be the third vote in just ten months. Parliamentary elections were held in the country at the end of September last year, followed by the two-round presidential election at the end of March and the beginning of April, when the candidates called the voters to the polls again.
The opposition party, Progressive Slovakia (PS) won the election, achieving 27.8% of votes, thereby winning 6 mandates, and sent their representatives to Renew.
Governor Robert Fico’s Smer party finished in second place, with 24.76%, thus delegating 5 independent representatives to the European Parliament.
In the country, the turnout in elections is usually very low, 20% was exceeded only once before, but due to current domestic political events, this was higher and 34.39% of voters went to the polls.
Hungary
The Hungarian European Parliament elections initially started boring, but in the spring, there was a lot of controversy over the resignation of President Katalin Novák, who granted a presidential pardon to a pedophile criminal, and the resignation of former Justice Minister Judit Varga, who opposed her. Not long after that, the husband of the former minister of justice appeared in front of the media and openly opposed Fidesz, who had been in government for 14 years, and founded his own party called the Tisza Party (in fact it was a party that had been registered before but had not been active for a long time, and was completely revitalized by Péter Magyar).
In June’s EP elections, the six opposition parties that ran in coalition in the 2022 parliamentary elections ran separately and suffered a crushing defeat, with most of them failing to even reach the 5% threshold. Fidesz, which has been in government for 14 years, won 11 mandates with 52% of the votes, while the new opposition Tisza Party, barely a few months old, was able to delegate 7 representatives to the EP, who joined the EPP, with a result of 33%, while the representatives of Fidesz joined the Patriots (however Fidesz won, they produced their worst performance of the EP elections ever and won the fewest mandates compared to the previous ones).
Present and Future of V4s
The V4s delegate a total of 106 representatives to the EP. It is difficult to determine which European views are most popular among the residents of these member states. It is much more possible to define which views and European party families are not popular: such are the S&D, Greens, Renew, and ESN. The more popular European parties are the EPP, which has the most delegates, a total of 35 representatives, the ECR, which receives 23 representatives, and the Patriots, with 20 representatives. So, it can certainly be stated that right-wing views dominate to a significant extent among the citizens of the V4. This kind of EU “vision” could be reason enough to maintain cooperation between countries.
At the Prague summit in February 2024, the V4 member countries agreed on issues related to energy policy, in particular on the need to increase nuclear energy, on resolute action against illegal migration, on the rejection of mandatory EU migration quotas, and on the prevention of attempts to federalize the EU. The V4 states also agreed on the issues related to agriculture, which are currently determining European public discourse and politics to an extremely large extent, particularly the EU’s Green Deal, which should pave the way for the elimination of net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. The V4 agreed that it must not come at the expense of the competitiveness of EU farmers.
The current formation of the V4s is a “new V2+2″, one side is given by the Czech Republic and Poland, while the other is given by Slovakia and Hungary. The heads of government were elected in Poland and Slovakia barely a year ago, but the Czech Republic will hold elections next year and Hungary in 2026, so the future of the formation can have many possible outcomes, and there is a chance for cooperation to revive in several ways. If in the Czech Republic’s next year’s parliamentary elections, Andrej Babis’s party performs as well as it did in the EP elections in June, Prime Ministers Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia may gain another ally in the person of Babis, and the formation may therefore change to V3+1 next year.
Another possible future for the formation could happen if the party of Petr Fiala wins again in the Czech parliamentary election, which will be held in October 2025, and the party of the new Hungarian opposition challenger Péter Magyar in the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary election. In this case, the V3+1 formation could also emerge in a different form, but then the Slovaks would be left out of closer cooperation. In this case, it should be highlighted that the possible Hungarian and Polish government parties would delegate a total of 28 members of the European Parliament to the EPP, thus giving even greater meaning to the developing cooperation.
However, it is also a possible scenario that the proportions of the V4 formation do not change, and the V2+2 ratio remains, only the alliance partners are exchanged if Babis’s party wins in the Czech Republic in 2025, as currently expected, and then in 2026 in Hungary is the party of Péter Magyar.
In short, the V4s can today be considered much more of a consultation forum than an influential regional alliance, but one thing is certain, within a few years the formation of the V4 is constantly changing, and with the current outlook, there is a good chance that cooperation will be strengthened again, and the interests of the region will be represented together by both the heads of government and the EP representatives within the EU.
Continue exploring:
Russian Interference in Post-Soviet Region
Slovakia’s Public Wages: Highest in V4, Exceeding EU Standards