Hungary plans anti-Ukraine bloc with Czechia, Slovakia

Hungary is looking to join forces with Czechia and Slovakia to form a Ukraine-skeptic alliance in the EU, a top political adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told POLITICO.

Orbán is hoping to team up with Andrej Babiš, whose right-wing populist party won Czechia’s recent parliamentary election, as well as Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico to align positions ahead of meetings of EU leaders, including holding pre-summit huddles, the aide said.

“It worked very well during the migration crisis. That’s how we could resist,” he said of the so-called Visegrad 4 group made up of Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Poland at a time when the Euroskeptic Law and Justice Party was in power in Warsaw following 2015.

Then-Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki led the charge as the alliance’s biggest member, with the “V4” group promoting pro-family policies as well as strong external borders for the EU, and opposing any mandatory relocation of migrants among member countries.

A new Visegrad alliance would count three rather than four members. Poland’s current center-right prime minister, Donald Tusk, is staunchly pro-Ukraine and is unlikely to enter any alliance with Orbán.

Fico and Babiš, however, have echoed the Hungarian leader’s viewpoints on Ukraine, calling for dialogue with Moscow rather than economic pressure. Babiš has been criticized for his public skepticism on supporting further European aid to Kyiv, with Czechia’s current foreign minister warning in an interview with POLITICO that Babiš would act as Orbán’s “puppet” at the European Council table.

Even so, it might take some time for any version of the Visegrad alliance to reform. While re-elected as Slovakia’s prime minister in 2023, Fico has stopped short of formally allying with the Hungarian leader on specific policy areas. Babiš has yet to form a government after his party’s recent election victory.

The Hungarian prime minister’s Fidesz party — part of the far-right Patriots for Europe group — could expand its partnerships in the European Parliament, he said, naming the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group and “some leftist groups” as potential allies.

Mainstream parties such as the center-right European People’s Party could sooner or later turn against European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, destroying the centrist majority that supported her re-election, the adviser said.