V4 countries adopt statement supporting national sovereignty
The Visegrad Four countries — Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia — adopted a statement during their summit in Warsaw yesterday that calls for greater national sovereignty for nations, while staying committed to the European Union.
The V4 leaders discuss the document yesterday in Warsaw. (Photo: Prime Ministerʼs Press Office / Szecsődi Balázs)
In the statement, the bloc calls for a strengthening of democratic control over the legislative and political processes of the EU at a national level, while also expressing its commitment to the Union and the principle of unity and the single market, Hungarian news agency MTI reported.
In a summary posted on kormany.hu, the official website of the Hungarian government, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that Hungary “fully and wholeheartedly supports the document”. He also said at a press conference after the meeting that the document “enjoys Hungary’s support 100%”.
In the Hungarian PM’s view “everything is in flux”, because a new world order is coming into being, and at times like this everyone has an obligation to establish their place in the new order, according to kormany.hu. Orbán has often talked about a “new era” and “a new world order”, however he has not clarified so far what he means by these terms exactly.
Answering a question, Orbán said that there is a debate in the EU regarding the future of continental Europe, and in this respect there are two tasks before us: we must set goals for ourselves, and we must decide how to organize our shared life within the EU, kormany.hu said.
In another criticism of the EU, which has supported Hungary’s development with thousands of billions of euros in the past decade, Orbán talked about a progressive “creeping withdrawal of powers” from the nation states, which he believes is a “bad development”, and “must be stopped”. “We must not surrender important powers such as the regulation of energy prices, the regulation of migration, independent tax regimes and job creation policy measures,” the Hungarian leader was quoted as saying by kormany.hu.
The largely Euroskeptical V4 bloc has been openly critical of many EU measures. The adoption of this latest statement seems to be another step toward putting it opposition at an official level.
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