V4 no more? Time for a Polish-Czech-Slovak triangle

By Paweł Musiałek (published in cooperation with the Jagiellonian Club think tank)

The war in Ukraine has caused major political repercussions in Central Europe, with relations in the Visegrad Group (V4) turned upside down. Poland’s relationship with Hungary has turned frosty, while never before has it been as close to the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is worth making the most of this opportunity while the climate is favourable.

The Polish-Hungarian alliance as the foundation of the V4

Before the war, Poland’s strongest relationship was with Hungary. Budapest was not only Warsaw’s most important partner in the region, but after the United Kingdom’s departure also its most important partner in the EU.

This alliance was based on several strategic factors. Firstly, both Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice (PiS) and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz are anti-liberal parties that build their political support on the dichotomy between the local people and cosmopolitan elites supported by the liberal European establishment with which both parties are in structural conflict.

The support of the conservative provinces also brings PiS and Fidesz together on axiological issues. Both parties oppose progressive policies and emphasise the need to preserve a social order based on traditional values.

The other factor that gives them potential for cooperation is the “sovereignty” aspect of their EU policy. PiS and Fidesz are advocates of selective integration, meaning only in areas where it makes sense from the point of view of the national interest. For them, integration for integration’s sake is not a value.

This naturally leads to tension with the EU establishment and results in the need to build a regional alliance of states with similar interests and values, pushing Budapest and Warsaw to work together.

The two countries’ shared problems proved strong enough for PiS to tolerate Orbán’s rapprochement with Russia. Before the war, despite its ambivalent rhetoric and energy cooperation, Hungary did not block sanctions packages against Russia after 2014, which for Warsaw would have meant crossing a certain red line.

Spotlight on Hungary

This line was crossed after the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Hungary not only curbed discussion on sanctions packages, but retained an extremely equivocal stance on the conflict. The narrative in the Orbán-controlled Hungarian media was starkly different from what the Polish state television channel TVP, for example, was saying about the war.

While the decision to curb the embargo on Russian oil and gas was understandable given Hungary’s high dependence on Russian raw materials, efforts such as those to exclude Patriarch Kirill from the sanction regime demonstrated that Russian-Hungarian cooperation had reached a dangerous level.

Since the war began, Hungary has been widely criticised, including by Kaczyński himself. Diplomatic relations have cooled markedly, best shown by the cancellation of the V4 summit due to take place in Budapest.

Orbán has also been criticised by the Czech Republic under its new prime minister, Petr Fiala (unlike in the time of his predecessor, Andrej Babiš). This has led some to wonder whether this spells the end of the V4. Yet the dissolution of the Visegrad Group is not on the table. The history of differences of interests between the countries is long, as the resistance of the format to conflicts shows.

Still, Hungary has clearly weakened its own position in the region. Importantly, the trajectory of Brussels’s dispute with Budapest over the rule of law is also beginning to diverge from that with Warsaw.

Is Prague the new Budapest for Poland?

At the same time as the process of the decline of Hungary’s role, Polish-Czech relations are being stepped up dynamically. Just a few months ago, the main topic on the Warsaw-Prague axis was the dispute over the Turów coal mine. This issue was not resolved by the end of Babiš’s tenure, despite many rounds of negotiations.

Turów, of course, was not the only reason why Czech-Polish relations were not strong. Prague criticised the reforms to the Polish justice system. It also did not share PiS’s way of pursuing European policy, although the Czechs themselves displayed a high level of scepticism towards the EU. Neither did the Czech government support PiS in its disputes with the European Commission.

The Czechs were cool about the vision of deeper cooperation within the V4 as they were reluctant to elevate regional collaboration to the “geopolitical” level and curb German influence on the CEE region, as PiS was trying to do.

The war seems to have changed the way the Czech Republic is seen in many areas – or at least this is the perception in Poland. Firstly, Warsaw noted that a significant political “de-russification” had taken place in the country. Prague now perceives Russia’s actions in the same way as Poland, and we know that the basis of a joint policy is a shared perception of threats.

The best example of the change is the fact that until recently the Czechs were not interested in building the Stork II gas pipeline to Poland. They saw the project as unviable from a business perspective as they have convenient connections to Germany and Slovakia.

But their calculations failed to foresee that Gazprom could go as far as to cut off gas to the whole of Europe. The Czech Republic now wants to build a gas link to Poland to gain access to the international natural gas market. Poland’s growing role is visible not only in energy. There are also plans to develop transport infrastructure to give the Czechs better access to Polish ports.

Speaking with Czechs, one might get the impression that they not only share Poland’s point of view, but have also realised that in many Western European countries even war was not enough to provoke an adequate response – thus further raising Warsaw’s status.

The Czech Republic also backs more ambitious support for Kyiv, including a strong reconstruction fund and admitting Ukraine to the EU. These demands and the determination to bring them about mean that today, for the first time in many years, Prague sees Warsaw as closer than Berlin, whose approach is regarded as very disappointing.

Furthermore, Poland has aspirations to be a military powerhouse in the region. Long before 24 February, Warsaw was spending 2% of GDP on the army, which was not standard in NATO. The announced increase in this spending to 3% of GDP signifies a radical acceleration of the modernisation programmes and increases Poland’s attractiveness in the field of security.

The growing importance of Poland signalled by its increasingly close cooperation with the United States is also visible in the international arena.

With war raging, the “traditional” ideological objections to PiS are fading, especially as Fiala hails from the ODS party, a partner of the Polish ruling party in the European Parliament.

Another thing Poland has in common with the Czech Republic is the question of refugees from Ukraine, who arrived in both countries after 24 February. Mutual challenges become the subject of mutual discussion. Czech society has a high opinion of Polish help both for refugees and for Ukraine itself.

A symbolic confirmation of the consensual course was the well-received joint visit to Kyiv by Prime Ministers Morawiecki and Fiala (as well as Slovenia’s Janez Janša and Polish deputy prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński).

Slovakia turns its back on Russia

While in the Czech case the war intensified efforts to create distance from Russia, Slovakia’s policy towards the Kremlin was in a completely different place before the war. For many years, Robert Fico’s leftist government’s policy was to avoid antagonising Russia. After 2020, the new, centre-right government was more pro-Atlanticist.

Just before the war, Bratislava adopted a new security and defence strategy. For the first time, it defined Russia as the source of challenges.

When the invasion of Ukraine began, Slovakia unexpectedly found itself in the avant-garde of countries most engaged in diplomatic, humanitarian and military aid. Among other things, the country supplied S-300 air defence systems, and discussions are ongoing on sending MiG-29 aircraft to Ukraine.

The war has persuaded the Slovakian government to agree to a taskforce to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank – to include armed forces from Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. To date, lack of public support, among other factors, has prevented allied armies from being stationed in the country.

Slovakia’s current course gives Poland the potential for closer cooperation with its “other” southern neighbour, with which it has always enjoyed good, but low-intensity, relations.

Unlike in Poland and the Czech Republic, Slovakia’s policy has faced criticism from the domestic opposition, which calls for greater neutrality regarding the war as a result of Slovaks’ traditional distrust of the US and NATO.

One of the sources of Slovakian affection towards Russia is the attachment of a large proportion of the elites and society to Slavophile slogans rooted in the 19th-century Slovakian national renaissance.

With the social divides caused by the war in mind, therefore, the advantageous situation in the country might soon end if Slovakian society feels the growing effects of inflation and starts to associate it with government policy.

A Polish-Slovak-Czech triangle?

The war has caused a profound reconfiguration of relationships within the V4. Hungary, whose position in the group depends only on Orbán’s policy, has been put out to pasture.

The golden age for the Polish-Slovak-Czech triangle has dawned. The challenge for these countries’ political elites is to exploit the opportunity before it is gone.

Naturally, the foundation of cooperation in the current geopolitical situation is security. Russian aggression has proved that the time of traditional threats is not up. Unfortunately, the countries of the Central European region in particular must remember this.

Once again in history, war has demonstrated the shared fates of our region, as well as the strategic differences between the V4 countries and the most influential West European states. This is why it is high time to recognise the need for regional solidarity.

The region must stop thinking of itself as the West’s aspiring poorer relative. We need to start seeing ourselves as a region with its own identity and interests, able to achieve a lot together.

Now is an excellent time for Warsaw to convince Prague and Bratislava of, for example, the merits of stronger involvement in the Three Seas Initiative, especially as the United States in June declared further financial support to help develop infrastructural links.

But it is not just a good moment to dust off old “expert” projects yet to be implemented. The time has also come to create new ideas.

If anything good is to come from the Russian aggression, it is getting to know the neighbours better. This could lead to a regional alliance based on common interests.

The original Polish version of this article can be found here. Translated by Ben Koschalka

Main image credit: KPRM/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Paweł Musiałek is a board member of the Jagiellonian Club think tank and director of its Analysis Centre