Official: EU candidates who also identify with Central Europe’s viewpoint ‘acceptable’

Visegrád Group leaders are in agreement that only candidates for European Union leadership positions who understand central Europe’s problems and identify with its viewpoint would be acceptable to them, Zoltán Kovács, the state secretary for international communications and relations, told a press conference on Saturday.

The V4 prime ministers held a meeting in Prague and agreed on the principles for choosing leaders and the positions they would represent in Brussels at the summit of EU leaders on Sunday.

Kovács said the V4 has reinforced its sense of unity and the basic principles they represent, including stopping migration, promoting a Europe of nation states and Christian culture underpinning the EU.

He said top-tier candidates such as Manfred Weber and Frans Timmermans were unacceptable and neither could count on V4 support. European People’s Party candidate Weber, he added, had insulted other European states besides Hungary.

Commenting on a report in German paper Die Welt that EU leaders had agreed at the G20 summit in Osaka on Friday that Weber should not be the next European Commission president, Kovács said such reports must always be treated with caution.

Kovács underlined that the V4 had not supported the spitzenkandidat system for five years, since this method of selecting the EC chief did not reflect the will of the European people.

He added that it was in everyone’s interest to make a decision on the EU leadership as soon as possible.

Source: MTI