Cold war between Visegrad and Brussels | GIS: Global Trends Video Reports
27 June 2018



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Cold war between Visegrad and Brussels
Brussels is angry with Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia for allegedly lacking solidarity and “EU values.” But the European Commission’s plan to use financial pressure to rein in the four politically conservative Central European members is nearly certain to backfire.

Alexandr Vondra
Cooperation among the Visegrad states was launched in 1991 by President Vaclav Havel of then-Czechoslovakia, Poland’s President Lech Walesa and Hungarian Prime Minister Jozsef Antall. Based on their dissident experiences, the leaders of these three newly liberated countries wanted to rid the region of the instruments of Soviet domination, as well as to obtain Western security guarantees against a resurrection of Russia’s power to subjugate them. A “return to Europe and the West” and “rebuilding capitalism” were slogans of the day.
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