Anniversary Visegrád Four Summit in Visegrád

The Presidents of the Visegrad Four (V4) group made up of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia met on Saturday, concluding a two-day summit in Visegrad, just north of Budapest, where the cooperation alliance was established twenty years earlier. The alliance has achieved its original goal, the Euro-Atlantic integration of its members, and the efficient form of cooperation had remained in place afterwards, the presidents said. All sides were in agreement that the V4 should play an active role in the Danube Strategy and the Baltic Sea Strategy.

The four presidents (Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, Pál Schmitt of Hungary, Ivan Gasparovic of Slovakia and Bronislaw Komorowski of Poland) said the alliance had achieved its original goal, the Euro-Atlantic integration of its members, but the efficient form of cooperation also remained.

Pál Schmitt was of the view that the V4 countries had been less affected by the economic crisis than big western European states, because "these countries were used to belt tightening. Nearly all western European states must make serious efforts to beat the crisis, not only Greece," Schmitt said.

Václav Klaus pointed out the Visegrad Four alliance had “strengthened friendship” between the countries. Bronislaw Komorowski stressed the V4 had to stay efficient in the future, too, so the alliance could represent their joint interests in the European Union, while Ivan Gasparovic said that the V4 should emphasize what ties them together and not what makes its members different.