\u201cI think it will come \u2014\u00a0and be more and more visible,\u201d said the prime minister\u2019s political director,\u00a0Bal\u00e1zs Orb\u00e1n, when asked about the potential for a Ukraine-skeptic alliance to start acting as a bloc in the European Council.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt worked very well during the migration crisis. That\u2019s how we could resist,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Then-Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki led the charge as the alliance\u2019s biggest member, with the \u201cV4\u201d group promoting pro-family policies as well as strong external borders for the EU, and opposing any mandatory relocation of migrants among member countries.<\/p>\n
The Visegrad 4 alliance split after Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as Poland advocated hawkish positions toward Moscow and Hungary took the opposite stance.<\/p>\n
A new Visegrad alliance would count three rather than four members. Poland\u2019s current center-right prime minister, Donald Tusk, is staunchly pro-Ukraine and is unlikely to enter any alliance with Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n
Fico and Babi\u0161, however, have echoed the Hungarian leader\u2019s viewpoints on Ukraine, calling for dialogue with Moscow rather than economic pressure. Babi\u0161 has been criticized for his public skepticism on supporting further European aid to Kyiv, with Czechia\u2019s current foreign minister warning in an interview with POLITICO<\/a> that Babi\u0161 would act as Orb\u00e1n\u2019s \u201cpuppet\u201d at the European Council table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI think it will come \u2014\u00a0and be more and more visible,\u201d said the prime minister\u2019s political director,\u00a0Bal\u00e1zs Orb\u00e1n,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[71115,6659,5898,33,35,2000,299,21604,2190,2452,6657,140669,11854,770,47,48,6566,2558,2824,657,1220,1781,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-532512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-andrej-babis","9":"tag-crisis","10":"tag-donald-tusk","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-energy","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-europe","15":"tag-euroskeptics","16":"tag-hungary","17":"tag-media","18":"tag-migration","19":"tag-oliver-varhelyi","20":"tag-peter-magyar","21":"tag-poland","22":"tag-poll","23":"tag-rights","24":"tag-robert-fico","25":"tag-slovakia","26":"tag-tanks","27":"tag-ukraine","28":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","29":"tag-viktor-orban","30":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115449904682381945","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}