PM Orbán: Visegrád Group ‘still has a future’

Specific and difficult issues tie the Visegrad Group of countries together, and it is easier to address them together than separately, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Thursday in Kosice (Kassa), Slovakia. So the V4 “still has a future”, Orbán added.

Common challenges include illegal migration, the energy crisis, preventing a recession and protecting the external Schengen borders, Orbán told a joint press conference at the summit meeting of the prime ministers of the Visegrad countries — Czechia, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.

The prime minister said V4 cooperation amounted to “a success story of 30 years” based on the conviction the member countries had “common interests and many common positions”.

Orbán said the war in Ukraine was expected to be drawn-out, so migration pressure from that direction would increase for the foreseeable future. The V4 demand that the EU take a share of this burden was a fair one, he added.

Migration pressure from the south, he said, would also grow. He noted that Hungary had joined with Serbia and Austria to help each other in border protection, and he had asked his counterparts to consider contributing to this initiative and had received a positive response. Orbán said he would recommend to his Serbian and Austrian counterparts that they accept support offered by the other V4 members.

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Meanwhile, the prime minister underlined that Hungary backs Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership, and Hungary’s parliament will consider the matter in its first session next year. “The Swedes and Finns haven’t lost a single minute because of Hungary,” he said, adding that Hungary was committed to providing the necessary support for their accession to the alliance.