“I think it will come — and be more and more visible,” said the prime minister’s political director, Balázs Orbán, when asked about the potential for a Ukraine-skeptic alliance to start acting as a bloc in the European Council.
“It worked very well during the migration crisis. That’s how we could resist,” he said of the so-called Visegrad 4 group made up of Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Poland at a time when the Euroskeptic Law and Justice Party was in power in Warsaw following 2015.
Then-Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki led the charge as the alliance’s biggest member, with the “V4” group promoting pro-family policies as well as strong external borders for the EU, and opposing any mandatory relocation of migrants among member countries.
The Visegrad 4 alliance split after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as Poland advocated hawkish positions toward Moscow and Hungary took the opposite stance.
A new Visegrad alliance would count three rather than four members. Poland’s current center-right prime minister, Donald Tusk, is staunchly pro-Ukraine and is unlikely to enter any alliance with Orbán.
Fico and Babiš, however, have echoed the Hungarian leader’s viewpoints on Ukraine, calling for dialogue with Moscow rather than economic pressure. Babiš has been criticized for his public skepticism on supporting further European aid to Kyiv, with Czechia’s current foreign minister warning in an interview with POLITICO that Babiš would act as Orbán’s “puppet” at the European Council table.