Hungary / Romania - Each year, end of July, Viktor Orbán holds a speech of political philosophy at the summer camp of Bálványos in Băile Tușnad (Tusványos or Tusnádfürdő in Hungarian) in Transylvania – a region formerly Hungarian, of which many parts…
Central Europe – To mark the end of Slovakia’s presidency of the Visegrád Group before handing it over to Czechia, Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Ľudovít Ódor, welcomed his V4 counterparts to Bratislava for a summit on immigration last Monday at a time when…
The concept of the Intermarium, a regional cooperation entity between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas, resurfaced in 1989. The author, an American of Polish origin, lists what remains to be done to turn this concept into a success.
An article…
Central Europe – On June 8, the EU-27 interior ministers finally approved the EU Migration Pact that had first been proposed by the European Commission in 2020. The European Commissioner for Home Affairs, the Swedish social-democrat Ylva Johansson, called this decision “a…
Poland/Hungary - Poland and Hungary, whose century-old friendship is often presented as the driving force behind the Visegrád Group, or V4, and more generally behind cooperative initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe (such as Visegrád+ and the Three Seas Initiative), have opposite…
Czechia/Hungary – The Visegrád Group appeared for many years as a more or less politically cohesive entity, representing the specific interests of Central Europe against Brussels’ efforts at imposing leftist liberal ideologies upon the whole EU and its drive for ever more…
Central Europe – The latest published economic figures indicate the persistence of high inflation in Central Europe, particularly in the four countries of the Visegrád Group, with the situation being particularly serious in Hungary.
Hungary’s annual inflation at 25.7 percent in January…
V4/Ukraine – The mayors of the Visegrád Four’s capital cities, who have formed a “Pact of Free Cities”, visited Kyiv on 11 January. Bratislava’s mayor Matúš Vallo, Budapest’s Gergely Karácsony, Prague’s Zdeněk Hřib, and Warsaw’s Rafał Trzaskowski came at the invitation of…
Slovakia – The Visegrád countries have held their planned summit despite press reports that the event would be postponed or even cancelled. Things actually seem to have gone smoothly, and there was plenty of agreement among the four Central European countries.
Photo:…
Slovakia/Hungary – Relations between Hungary and its former province of Upper Hungary, now Slovakia, have never been easy, with the recurring issue of the large Hungarian minority in southern Slovakia regularly undermining all attempts by both Budapest and Bratislava to improve…
Last Sunday the Hungarian capital Budapest saw one of its biggest demonstrations in years. The demonstrators were protesting against Viktor Orbán’s government, and especially against deteriorating standards of living and low teacher salaries.
The Visegrád Group countries face inflation well above the…
Interview with Janez Janša, former Prime Minister of Slovenia and leader of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka, SDS): "The political processes in Europe over the past decade and a half turned away from democracy."
Janez Janša has been one of…