French President Emmanuel Macron to attend Visegrad Group summit in Budapest
On the invitation of Hungary, French President Emmanuel Macron will today attend a summit of the Visegrad Group (V4) in Budapest.
The V4 is an alliance of EU countries whose members consist of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Macron’s invite comes as France prepares to take on the EU Council presidency on January 1.
Relations between the V4 and the EU have been highly strained in recent months. As a demonstrative example, earlier this year Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that parts of the EU’s treaties were incompatible with Poland’s constitution—a move to assert Polish autonomy.
The Macron invite is likely less a gesture of reconciliation and more a V4 push to be less constrained by EU law. In the short-term, Macron’s France and other pro-Union allies are likely to continue to negotiate with the V4 to try and resolve outstanding differences.
In the medium- to long-term, however, the V4 will continue to press a de facto legal divorce with the bloc unless the latter takes a harder line on continued defiance of EU law. Failure to take a hard line could also have reaching economic implications, threatening the financial integrity of the Union.
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