The V4 do not want federalisation, nor a return to only the single market. The emergence of multi-speed Europe is particularly undesirable for them. However, this is where the Visegrád consensus ends, Vít Dostál of the Association for Foreign Affairs (AMO) writes..

The first scenario of the Commission´s menu – also known as “Bratislava plus” – is optimum for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In the spirit of the Bratislava Declaration from September, the EU would focus on the progress in certain areas such as asylum and migration policy and the digital agenda, but would not enter riskier businesses such as a transformation of the EU budget.

On the other hand, we can read from the behaviour of the Polish and Hungarian statesmen that they favour the variant in which the EU would focus just on certain areas but would work more efficiently. Neither Viktor Orbán nor Jarosław Kaczyński think that EU should interfere in social policy. However, they support the European team in the protection of the bloc’s borders.

The main observation from the Warsaw meeting is the fact that the Visegrád leaders focused more on the institutional aspects than policies that the EU should develop. Conversely, in Juncker´s text, the word “institution“ is hardly to be found. Regarding the capacity to deliver, the Commission operates with the term “decision-making“.

In this regard, the Visegrád message is very defensive. Prague, Warsaw, Budapest and Bratislava express their concerns about creating exclusive clubs, they demand the equality of member states and they want to involve national parliaments more in the political process that would control the subnational institutions. 

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