VISEGRÁD AFTER ORBÁN: REVIVAL WITHOUT REUNION?

On 10 September 2026, the prime ministers of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia met at Bratislava Castle alongside Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin. The photograph could easily have been dismissed as another exercise in regional summitry. Yet the meeting formed part of a more consequential sequence. In June, the four leaders had gathered in Gödöllő for the first Visegrád summit at the prime-ministerial level since February 2024. On 1 September, their foreign ministers met after a two-year interruption. Bratislava then carried the renewed dialogue directly into the European arena by bringing the Visegrád Four (hereinafter: V4) together with the government holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. These were not isolated diplomatic encounters. Taken together, they marked the political reactivation of a format that had increasingly been treated as exhausted.

The content of this revival was as revealing as its timing. The four governments did not reunite around a new ideological manifesto. Their joint agenda concentrated instead on the European Union’s (hereinafter: the EU) 2028-2034 budget, cohesion and agricultural funding, energy prices, industrial competitiveness, transport and energy infrastructure, migration, digitalisation and cross-border cybersecurity. In Bratislava, the leaders pledged to resist European measures that would further increase energy costs, while Poland pressed for the next EU budget to recognise the financial burden borne by states protecting the Union’s external border. The V4 was therefore returning not primarily as a political identity, but as a mechanism for coordinating material interests within the EU.

This distinction matters because the Visegrád Group never formally disappeared. Established in 1991 to support democratic transformation and Euro-Atlantic integration, it continued to possess a rotating presidency, ministerial and sectoral channels, the V4+ dialogue format and the International Visegrád Fund even during periods of high-level political paralysis. The Fund remained the group’s only fully institutionalised body and continued to sustain cooperation among municipalities, universities, civil-society organisations and cultural institutions. What deteriorated was not the existence of Visegrád cooperation but its capacity to generate coordinated political action among governments. Institutional survival and political functionality were therefore never the same thing.

That political functionality had weakened sharply after the war in Ukraine. The war exposed differences over Russia, military assistance, sanctions and the strategic meaning of Ukraine’s survival. It also damaged the Polish-Hungarian relationship that had previously underpinned some of the V4’s most visible interventions in European politics. During this period, technical and societal cooperation persisted, but the group struggled to act as a credible governmental coalition. The first leaders’ summit after February 2024 occurred only in June 2026, following the change of government in Hungary and an explicit attempt by all four prime ministers to restore Visegrád’s coordinating role inside the EU.

Péter Magyar’s victory over Viktor Orbán altered this regional geometry. Magyar selected Poland for his first official foreign visit as prime minister, reopened governmental dialogue with Poland and made the revitalisation of the V4 one of the earliest regional projects of his government. The symbolic importance was clear: the Polish-Hungarian relationship was no longer burdened by the same conflict over Russia and European policy that had characterised Orbán’s final years in government. The practical importance soon followed. The Gödöllő summit restored coordination among the prime ministers, instructed ministers and EU officials to reopen policy channels and identified common positions on energy, migration, the EU budget, agricultural policy and regional infrastructure.

Orbán’s departure, however, did not produce political homogeneity. Donald Tusk, Péter Magyar, Andrej Babiš and Robert Fico lead governments with different relationships to European integration, liberal democracy, Russia and Ukraine. Important disagreements remain, and the renewed V4 is unlikely to speak with one voice on the most divisive questions of European security and institutional development. Yet those differences do not necessarily make cooperation impossible. They may instead determine its new form. Four governments can disagree about the future political character of Europe while still sharing concrete interests in cohesion funding, agricultural support, affordable energy, industrial protection, north–south infrastructure and greater regional influence over EU decision-making. The central question is therefore not whether the Visegrád Four is “back”. It is what kind of Visegrád Four is returning.

During its most politically visible period after the 2015 migration crisis, the group was frequently understood as an ideologically aligned sovereignty bloc: a Central European coalition contesting migration policy, liberal institutional constraints and the distribution of authority inside the EU. That interpretation was always incomplete, but the convergence between the Orbán and PiS governments gave it considerable political substance. The emerging V4 rests on a different foundation. Rather than deriving cohesion from a shared political project, it is increasingly organised around selective bargains among governments whose interests overlap on some files and diverge sharply on others.

This article argues that the post-Orbán revival of the Visegrád Group should be understood as a transition from a highly visible ideological bloc towards a more flexible transactional regional coalition. Its members are unlikely to reunite around a common vision of Europe. They may nevertheless coordinate effectively where economic, budgetary, energy, agricultural and infrastructural interests coincide. The new V4 does not need agreement on Europe. It needs agreement on what its members want from Europe.

Whether this model proves durable will depend on more than summit declarations. The decisive tests will be whether the four governments can translate renewed dialogue into common EU positions, preserve cooperation when disagreements over Russia and Ukraine re-emerge, and deliver benefits that cannot be achieved as efficiently through bilateral relations or alternative regional formats. Visegrád may therefore be returning without politically reuniting: less coherent as a camp, but potentially more usable as a bargaining coalition.

What Broke The Old Visegrad?

There was never a single “old Visegrád”. Since its establishment in 1991, the group has operated through several distinct political logics. It began as a coalition of democratic transformation and European reintegration, became a flexible platform for functional cooperation after its members entered the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (hereinafter: NATO) and the EU, and acquired a more confrontational political identity during the migration crisis after 2015. Understanding what later broke down, therefore, requires distinguishing the disappearance of one particular mode of Visegrád cooperation from the collapse of the group as a whole.

The original Visegrád project was organised around positive integration. Poland, Hungary and the then Czechoslovakia sought to overcome the institutional, political and economic legacies of communism, consolidate parliamentary democracy and market reform, and secure incorporation into European and Euro-Atlantic structures. Once NATO and EU accession had been achieved, the founding objective could no longer provide the same organising purpose. Visegrád cooperation consequently became more decentralised and selective, covering transport, energy, education, culture, cross-border relations and support for the Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership. Its loose institutional design was advantageous: governments could cooperate where interests converged without being bound by a permanent secretariat or a common foreign policy.

The migration crisis of 2015 gave this flexible format a new political centre. At their extraordinary Czechia summit in September, the four prime ministers opposed mandatory and permanent refugee-relocation quotas, supported stronger external-border protection and agreed to coordinate their positions before forthcoming EU meetings. Similar positions survived beyond the immediate crisis. In 2020, the four governments again defended national discretion over solidarity mechanisms and prioritised control of migration routes and external borders. Migration therefore turned the V4 from a relatively low-profile regional platform into one of the most recognisable political coalitions inside the EU.

This visibility, however, could be mistaken for deeper cohesion than actually existed. The four governments did not share a complete ideological programme. Changes of government in Czechia, Slovakia and Poland repeatedly altered the group’s internal balance. What held the V4 together most effectively was not agreement on a comprehensive model of Europe but opposition to particular proposals associated with compulsory redistribution, excessive centralisation or insufficient recognition of national competences. The Orbán-Law and Justice Party (hereinafter: the PiS) relationship supplied the group with a broader language of sovereignty and resistance to external constraint, but Czech and Slovak governments did not always attach the same meaning or intensity to that agenda.

The V4’s most politically visible phase was therefore sustained largely through negative coordination: its members could agree on what they wished to prevent without having to agree fully on what should replace it. This was well suited to EU disputes in which coordinated opposition, veto threats or common negotiating positions could produce leverage at relatively limited cost. Migration policy rewarded unity around a defensive demand. It did not require the four governments to adopt the same threat perception, purchase the same capabilities or accept comparable strategic risks.

The war in Ukraine changed the nature of the cooperation problem. The dominant question facing Central Europe was no longer how to resist or modify an EU regulatory proposal. It was how to respond to a nearby war. That required agreement on the source and severity of the threat, the purpose of sanctions, the provision of weapons, the future relationship with Russia, dependence on Russian energy and the costs that each state was prepared to bear. In other words, the war required positive strategic coordination rather than veto-based solidarity.

The divergence became structural. Poland and Czechia treated Ukraine’s survival as closely connected to their own security and became leading advocates of military support, stronger sanctions and Russia’s international isolation. Hungary condemned the invasion formally but maintained energy ties with Russia, rejected weapons deliveries and repeatedly sought to limit or delay common European measures. Slovakia initially belonged to the group of strong Ukrainian supporters, but Robert Fico’s return to government in 2023 moved Bratislava closer to Hungary on military assistance and the preferred route to ending the war. By early 2024, the V4 had developed a visible two-plus-two division: Poland and Czechia supported the Czech ammunition initiative for Ukraine, while Hungary and Slovakia declined to participate militarily.

The damage was particularly severe because the war divided the relationship that had previously supplied the group with much of its political weight. PiS and Fidesz had cooperated closely in European institutional disputes, but Poland and Hungary interpreted Russian aggression through incompatible strategic frameworks. Poland viewed a sovereign Ukraine as indispensable to the security of Europe’s eastern flank and called for extensive military assistance and the isolation of Russia. Orbán’s government instead defined Hungarian security in terms of avoiding involvement in the conflict, preserving Russian energy supplies and opposing policies that it presented as economically damaging or escalatory. Ideological proximity on sovereignty and culture could not compensate for disagreement over the principal military threat to the region.

Institutional symptoms soon followed. A scheduled meeting of V4 defence ministers in Hungary was cancelled in March 2022 after the Polish and Czech ministers refused to attend because of Hungary’s position on the war. High-level dialogue later resumed intermittently, but the meetings increasingly served to contain disagreement and preserve the format rather than generate common policy. At the February 2024 Prague summit, all four leaders could formally acknowledge Russia’s responsibility for the invasion, yet they remained divided over military assistance and the strategic logic of the war. A foreign ministers’ meeting the following month produced the same result: Poland and Czechia backed further weapons provision, while Hungary and Slovakia maintained their refusal to send arms.

As Visegrád lost its ability to represent a common Central European position on security, cooperation migrated towards formats with greater strategic agreement. Poland intensified its relations with Czechia, the Baltic and Nordic states, NATO’s Bucharest Nine and ad hoc coalitions supporting Ukraine. The V4 remained relevant to economic, infrastructural and societal cooperation, but it ceased to be the region’s principal vehicle for responding to its most important security question. This was not merely a disagreement inside an otherwise functioning coalition. It was a decline in the format’s comparative utility: other arrangements could produce decisions that the V4 could not.

Yet the crisis did not eliminate Visegrád cooperation. Ministerial contacts continued in less contentious sectors, the rotating presidency remained in place and the International Visegrád Fund sustained cross-border programmes and assistance to Ukrainian society. Poland’s 2024-2025 presidency was explicitly framed as a return to the group’s basic functions, concentrating on security, connectivity and practical cooperation in areas of shared interest rather than attempting to manufacture agreement where none existed.

The distinction is fundamental. The “old Visegrád” did not break because its members suddenly ceased to share geographical, economic or institutional interests. It broke because the issue dominating their region required a form of solidarity that their previous political alignment had never been designed to provide. Migration rewarded veto cohesion; war demanded strategic cohesion. The first could be constructed through common resistance. The second required a shared hierarchy of threats, risks and sacrifices.

This also explains why a renewed V4 cannot simply reproduce the politics of 2015-2021. Rebuilding cooperation will require more than restoring regular meetings or removing one source of bilateral tension. The four governments must either develop a tolerable minimum of strategic agreement or prevent persistent security divisions from paralysing cooperation in other areas. The post-Orbán V4 will therefore be viable only if it can do what the earlier political bloc could not: preserve selective coordination without mistaking it for ideological or strategic unity.

The Hungarian Variable: What Orbán’s Defeat Changed

Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat mattered to the Visegrád Group for reasons extending beyond the replacement of one prime minister by another. It altered the function that Hungary performed within regional cooperation. During Orbán’s final years in office, Hungary had become both indispensable to the V4’s political identity and increasingly disruptive to its practical operation. Hungary’s earlier alliance with Poland’s PiS government had helped give Visegrád its image as a sovereignty-oriented bloc. After 2022, however, Orbán’s Russia policy turned Hungary into a central point of obstruction precisely when the region’s principal challenge required strategic coordination. The April 2026 change of government did not eliminate the V4’s disagreements, but it removed the member most closely associated with converting those disagreements into institutional paralysis.

Péter Magyar signalled the intended change immediately. He selected Poland for his first foreign visit as prime minister, travelled with six members of his sixteen-minister cabinet and publicly presented the restoration of Polish-Hungarian relations as part of Hungary’s return to constructive European cooperation. The choice was simultaneously bilateral and institutional. Repairing relations with Poland was necessary not merely because the two countries had once enjoyed a privileged partnership, but because the deterioration of that relationship had deprived the V4 of one of its principal political connections. During the visit, Magyar announced his intention to convene a summit before the end of Hungary’s rotating V4 presidency.

The Gödöllő summit on 23 June translated that symbolism into a procedural reset. The four prime ministers agreed to restore regular consultations before meetings of the European Council and the Council of the EU, coordinate in European institutions and revive V4+ engagement with external partners. Their cooperation would operate explicitly in fields where interests coincided and consensus could be reached. Magyar also acknowledged that the breakdown in Polish-Hungarian relations had caused the central rupture within the group. The summit, therefore, did not pretend that substantive agreement had already been restored. Its immediate achievement was more limited but essential: it recreated the political process through which agreement could once again be sought.

The first important change in the Hungarian variable concerns Hungary’s relationship with the EU. Orbán had increasingly treated conflict with EU institutions as both an ideological resource and a bargaining instrument. Visegrád cooperation could consequently function as a defensive shield: a means of resisting rule-of-law conditionality, migration policy, institutional pressure or further centralisation. Magyar’s government instead made reintegration into the EU one of its principal domestic and international objectives. Hungary requested membership of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, proposed a National Asset Protection and Recovery Office and negotiated reforms intended to restore access to EU recovery and cohesion funding. Billions of euros became available or moved closer to release, although some payments remained dependent on the completion and assessment of further reforms.

This altered the strategic purpose that Visegrád could serve for Hungary. A government seeking to restore credibility in Brussels had less need for a permanent coalition against EU institutions. It had a greater need for a coalition inside those institutions: one capable of shaping the next multiannual budget, cohesion policy, agricultural support, energy regulation and industrial policy. The shift was therefore not from national bargaining to the abandonment of national interests. It was from using confrontation and obstruction as default sources of leverage towards using regional coordination to increase Hungary’s influence over policies that would be adopted collectively.

The second change concerns Russia. In September, Hungary expelled ten Russian diplomats for activities incompatible with their diplomatic status, the country’s first publicly announced expulsion of Russian diplomats since 2018. The government simultaneously reaffirmed that Hungary’s principal alliances were the EU and NATO and described Russian policy as a security challenge for Hungary and Europe. Yet the Foreign Minister also stated that Russia would remain a partner and that necessary diplomatic channels should stay open. The policy was therefore a recalibration rather than a complete rupture: clearer Western alignment combined with continued dialogue where the government considered it necessary.

Ukraine policy displays the same combination of discontinuity and constraint. Magyar’s government reached an agreement with Kyiv concerning the linguistic, educational and cultural rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, creating a route for Hungary to withdraw its obstruction of Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations. By June, the government had moved away from blocking the accession process while continuing to refuse military assistance. By October, Hungary was preparing to allow additional negotiating clusters to open once the agreed minority-education safeguards were enacted. This was substantially different from Orbán’s broader effort to cast Ukraine’s integration as intrinsically threatening. It nevertheless preserved a recognisably Hungarian condition: European alignment would not require Hungary to abandon its responsibility towards ethnic Hungarians beyond the nation’s borders.

The relevant transformation can therefore be described as a movement from categorical obstruction to conditional consent. Orbán frequently elevated an individual dispute into a broader confrontation over Hungary’s sovereignty, Brussels’ legitimacy or Europe’s strategic direction. Magyar has shown a greater willingness to separate issues. A minority-rights dispute may delay a particular stage of Ukraine’s accession without requiring Hungary to oppose the entire enlargement process. Continued energy relations with Russia need not prevent Hungary from recognising Russia as a security challenge, expelling suspected intelligence operatives or cooperating more closely with NATO. Disagreement is no longer automatically converted into non-cooperation across every policy field.

Energy policy demonstrates why this distinction should not be mistaken for rapid geopolitical separation. Hungary remains exceptionally dependent on imported fuels, including Russian supplies, and public opinion is reluctant to accept an abrupt end to those connections. Magyar’s government has launched a major expansion of wind energy and presented diversification as a response to geopolitical and economic vulnerability. At the same time, it intends to extend the operation of the existing Russian-built Paks nuclear plant because it regards the project as economically necessary. Hungary is consequently pursuing de-risking rather than immediate decoupling: reducing one-sided exposure while retaining infrastructure and relationships that cannot be replaced quickly or cheaply.

This combination of change and continuity is central to understanding the new V4. Magyar has not transformed Hungary into a state whose preferences automatically coincide with those of Donald Tusk’s Poland. His government remains centre-right, protective of national competences and attentive to minority rights, energy costs and the domestic effects of EU decisions. It is also constrained by an electorate that expects improved relations with Europe without necessarily supporting every policy associated with deeper alignment. The important change is not that Hungarian national interest has disappeared. It is that Hungary now appears more willing to pursue it through participation, coalition-building and conditional agreement rather than through recurrent isolation and veto.

For Visegrád, the consequences are threefold. First, the Polish-Hungarian relationship has ceased to be the principal source of high-level paralysis. Second, Hungary has regained credibility as a potential partner in EU coalition-building, making common positions more useful to Poland and Czechia. Third, disputes have become more divisible. The four governments can disagree over military support for Ukraine or the pace of ending Russian energy dependence without necessarily abandoning coordination on the EU budget, cohesion funding, agriculture, automotive regulation or regional infrastructure.

The Gödöllő formula reflected this new logic precisely. Cooperation would occur wherever interests coincided, and consensus was possible. This appears modest when compared with the ideological visibility of the V4 after 2015. Yet it may be institutionally more realistic. Rather than asking four different governments to perform a unity they do not possess, it enables them to identify specific fields in which joint action increases their bargaining capacity. The return of Visegrád thus depends less on the emergence of a new common ideology than on the ability to compartmentalise disagreement.

Orbán’s defeat therefore removed a regional veto point, but it did not create a common foreign policy. Magyar did not abolish Hungarian bargaining; he changed its predominant instrument. Under Orbán, influence was frequently sought through the threat of blockage. Under Magyar, it is increasingly sought through conditional participation. That change was sufficient to reopen the V4. Whether it will be sufficient to sustain it depends on the incentives facing the other three governments.

Four Governments, Four Incentive Structures

The revival of the Visegrád Group should not be mistaken for a convergence of four governments around a common political programme. The renewed cooperation is better understood as an alignment of incentives. Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia have different relationships with the EU, different security preferences and different alternatives to regional cooperation. They are returning to the same table, not because they now interpret Europe in the same way, but because each government expects Visegrád coordination to improve its position on particular issues. The group’s durability will consequently depend on whether these distinct incentives remain compatible even when their underlying political motivations do not. The June 2026 joint declaration captured this logic by committing the four governments to cooperate in areas where their interests coincide and decisions can be reached by consensus.

Poland: European Leverage Without Regional Dependence:

Donald Tusk’s government approaches Visegrád primarily as an instrument for strengthening Central and Eastern Europe’s influence within the EU. At the Gödöllő summit, Tusk identified energy, migration, cohesion policy and agriculture as areas in which the four countries share sufficient interests to act together. He also placed unusual emphasis on trust and mutual loyalty, reflecting the Polish assessment that the group’s earlier paralysis resulted not only from policy disagreement but from doubts about whether its members were pursuing compatible strategic objectives. For Poland, therefore, renewed cooperation must be both useful and politically credible.

This is particularly visible in the negotiations over the EU’s 2028-2034 budget. At the Bratislava summit, Tusk argued that the new financial framework should recognise the exceptional expenditure borne by states protecting the Union’s external border. He also supported a common V4 position against measures that would further raise energy prices and weaken European industry. Cohesion funding, agricultural support, energy affordability and compensation for border-security burdens allow Poland to convert its national priorities into regional demands with greater negotiating weight.

Visegrád is nevertheless only one component of Poland’s broader coalition strategy. Tusk simultaneously participates in security and foreign-policy formats with Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy and has argued that eastern-flank states should be represented in all major discussions concerning European security and Ukraine. Poland can also work through NATO, the Bucharest Nine, bilateral partnerships and wider coalitions of states supporting Ukraine. Poland, therefore, does not depend on V4 cooperation for access to European decision-making. Its incentive is to use Visegrád where regional coordination adds leverage, while preventing the group from constraining Poland’s security commitments or associating Poland with positions it considers strategically unacceptable.

This gives Poland the role of a conditional anchor. It possesses the political weight to make the V4 consequential, but it also has credible alternatives if the format becomes ineffective. Its commitment is therefore likely to remain strongest on distributive and regulatory questions, such as the budget, energy, agriculture and migration, and weakest where coordination could undermine European and transatlantic unity over Russia or Ukraine. Poland seeks regional leverage, but not regional dependence.

Hungary: Reintegration Through Constructive Bargaining:

Péter Magyar’s government has a different incentive structure. For Hungary, the revival of Visegrád is part of a broader attempt to demonstrate that Hungary can again operate as a constructive participant in European coalition-building. During Magyar’s first European Council visit as prime minister, his government simultaneously pursued the closure of the Article 7 procedure, joined discussions among the Friends of Cohesion and prepared the relaunch of V4 coordination. Magyar promised to defend Hungarian interests but declared that his government would not engage in conflict merely for its own sake and would use the veto only where necessary to protect substantive national interests.

Visegrád, therefore, serves both a reputational and a material function for Hungary. Re-establishing cooperation with Poland, Czechia and Slovakia helps distance the new government from the isolation associated with Orbán’s final years. At the same time, the group provides Hungary with partners in negotiations over cohesion resources, agricultural funding, the green transition, automotive regulation and north-south transport and energy links. The Gödöllő agreement to restore consultations before European Council and Council of the EU meetings directly supported this objective.

Hungary’s commitment to the revived V4 may consequently be stronger than Poland’s, although for different reasons. Poland uses the format to supplement an already extensive network of influence. Magyar’s Hungary also needs Visegrád to demonstrate that regional and European reintegration is producing concrete results. Failure would not merely deprive Hungary of one bargaining forum; it could reinforce the perception that Hungary’s isolation survived the change of government.

Yet reintegration does not mean subordination. Magyar continues to frame European engagement around Hungarian interests, cohesion funding, agricultural resources, energy affordability and national competences. The relevant change is not the disappearance of disagreement but a greater willingness to separate one dispute from the entire relationship. Hungary’s incentive is therefore regional reintegration without the abandonment of conditional bargaining.

Czechia: A Coalition For Industrial And Regulatory Interests:

Andrej Babiš’s government approaches the V4 most clearly through the economics of European decision-making. Czech priorities have concentrated on the competitiveness of European industry, energy and fuel prices, the emissions-trading system, migration and the design of the next EU budget. At the Bratislava meeting, Babiš argued that the new budget must preserve cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy, reflect differences in member states’ development levels and avoid penalising countries with strong industrial sectors that are still converging with Western Europe.

These positions reflect the exposure of the Czech economy to high energy prices, carbon costs and the condition of European manufacturing. Babiš has repeatedly pressed for changes to the Emissions Trading System (hereinafter: the ETS) framework and has treated the retention of industrial production as a central European rather than merely national concern. His government has pursued this agenda not only through the V4 but also through bilateral or ad hoc partnerships with Italy, Germany, Romania and other states concerned with competitiveness and energy security.

The Czech incentive is therefore highly instrumental. Czechia will use the V4 when four coordinated votes, a common declaration or a joint intervention can enlarge a coalition around industry, energy, migration or the budget. It is less likely to treat the group as an exclusive diplomatic identity. Where cooperation with Italy, Germany or a broader Friends of Cohesion coalition produces greater influence, the Czech government has little reason to restrict itself to the regional format.

This pragmatism also limits the extent to which economic agreement should be interpreted as complete political alignment with either Fico or Magyar. Babiš’s government has reaffirmed Czechia’s Article 5 commitment, increased defence expenditure towards 2 per cent of GDP and prioritised air defence. The Czech government can therefore cooperate closely with Slovakia on energy prices or with Hungary on cohesion funding without adopting their positions on every aspect of Russia, Ukraine or European security.

Czechia’s preferred model is thus portfolio cooperation: different coalitions for different policy files. Visegrád is valuable where the region’s common industrial structure and budgetary interests provide a basis for joint bargaining. It is dispensable where other configurations are more effective.

Slovakia: Amplification Through Regional Leadership:

Robert Fico’s government has perhaps the strongest incentive to invest rhetorical and organisational energy in the V4. Slovakia assumed the rotating presidency in July 2026, and Fico presented the group as a potential bloc of approximately 65 million citizens that should help shape European decisions rather than merely receive them. His presidency identified four priorities: competitiveness and the EU budget; enlargement; practical sectoral cooperation in defence, the defence industry, migration, border protection, health and transport; and continued support for societal connections through the International Visegrád Fund.

For a smaller member state, regional coordination offers political amplification. Acting alone, Slovakia has limited capacity to shape the EU budget, energy regulation or migration policy. As the convenor of a functioning V4, Bratislava can present regional priorities to the Council presidency, organise V4+ meetings and position itself as an intermediary between different Central European governments. The September meeting with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin demonstrated precisely this strategy: Slovakia used its presidency to connect V4 priorities directly with the state holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.

The V4 also complements Fico’s sovereignty-oriented presentation of Slovakia as a state that should help create European policy rather than function as a passive recipient of decisions taken in Brussels. His government has defended cohesion and agricultural spending, resisted transferring resources from these policies towards newer EU priorities and opposed the planned elimination of Russian gas imports on the grounds of energy cost and security. Regional cooperation allows such positions to acquire greater weight when they overlap with the economic concerns of other V4 governments.

Slovakia is, nevertheless, both the principal organiser of the revived V4 and one of its potential stress points. Fico’s positions on Russia, Ukraine and sanctions remain closer to those associated with the group’s earlier division than those of Tusk or Magyar. Bratislava’s incentive is therefore to prevent these disputes from dominating the agenda. Fico’s insistence that the V4 should place on the table only issues that unite its members is not merely a diplomatic slogan. It is an acknowledgment that Slovakia can maximise the group’s influence only by compartmentalising the questions most likely to divide it.

These four incentive structures are compatible, but they are not identical. Poland seeks European leverage without dependence. Hungary seeks regional reintegration without surrendering national bargaining. Czechia seeks economic and regulatory gains without diplomatic exclusivity. Slovakia seeks political amplification without renewed isolation.

The result is an asymmetrical coalition. All four governments can benefit from Visegrád cooperation, but the costs of failure differ. Hungary and Slovakia have the strongest immediate need for the format’s political success: Budapest because it supports post-Orbán reintegration, and Bratislava because the rotating presidency offers Fico a platform for regional leadership. Czechia’s attachment is primarily policy-specific, while Poland possesses the widest range of alternative coalitions. The governments most enthusiastic about the V4 are therefore not necessarily those whose participation is most important to its influence.

This asymmetry helps explain both the potential and the fragility of the revival. Cooperation is most likely where the four incentive structures point towards the same outcome despite different motives: protecting cohesion and agricultural funding, reducing energy costs, defending industrial competitiveness, strengthening north-south infrastructure and coordinating positions on migration and the EU’s external border. The June agreement placed precisely these issues at the centre of renewed cooperation.

Cooperation will be more difficult where governments must share not only a preferred policy outcome but also a common interpretation of threats, obligations and acceptable costs. Russia, military assistance to Ukraine, the future of sanctions and the relationship between sovereignty and EU institutional authority still expose fundamental differences. The new V4 can survive such disagreement only if its members resist converting every division into a test of regional loyalty.

The revived group is therefore held together by compatible uses rather than common identity. Its members do not need to value Visegrád for the same reason. They need only to conclude that cooperation generates sufficient returns on a sufficiently important range of issues. A shared agenda can emerge from different motives; what remains uncertain is whether it can survive when those motives begin to pull in opposite directions.

From Ideological Bloc To Transactional Coalition

The most important feature of the Visegrád Group’s revival is not the return of summit diplomacy. It is the change in the terms on which cooperation is being reconstructed. Hungary’s new government has explicitly distinguished the emerging arrangement from an ideological alliance, presenting it instead as results-oriented regional cooperation based on common interests. The June 2026 Gödöllő declaration similarly committed the four governments to revive Visegrád as a platform for dialogue and coordination, while the September Bratislava meeting concentrated on the next EU budget, energy prices and European competitiveness. The new V4 is therefore being defined less by a shared political identity than by the policy results its members believe they can obtain together.

This change can be conceptualised as a transition from an ideological bloc to a transactional regional coalition.

An ideological bloc rests on more than agreement over individual policies. Its members share a broader interpretation of political conflict, identify similar adversaries and treat solidarity across different issues as part of the coalition itself. Cooperation on migration, for example, becomes connected to common positions on sovereignty, liberal institutions, national identity and the future organisation of Europe. Disagreement on one question may therefore be interpreted as disloyalty to a wider political project.

A transactional regional coalition operates differently. Its members coordinate on particular and recurrent policy files because combined action offers greater expected returns than acting separately. Cooperation does not require a comprehensive common ideology, an exclusive diplomatic identity or an expectation of solidarity across unrelated issues. A government can participate in a common V4 position on cohesion funding while rejecting the positions of the same partners on Ukraine. It can cooperate on energy costs without accepting their understanding of European integration. The unit of cohesion is therefore not the government as a whole but the policy dossier.

Transactionality should not be confused with temporary opportunism. An ad hoc coalition may disappear once a single vote or negotiation has concluded. A transactional regional coalition can become durable when the interests generating its bargains are structural and recurrent. The EU budget is renegotiated periodically; energy and industrial policy remain permanent areas of contestation; agricultural funding and infrastructure require repeated coordination; and European Council meetings continuously produce new opportunities for common positioning. The transactions recur because the underlying economic and geographical conditions recur.

The post-Orbán V4 displays four characteristics of such a coalition. The first is a selective scope. The Gödöllő formula did not attempt to restore agreement across the entire European agenda. It focused on areas in which common interests could be identified and decisions reached by consensus. These included competitiveness, energy security, cross-border transport, the effective use of EU funding, migration, cohesion policy and agriculture. Bratislava retained the same logic three months later, with the leaders prioritising the next multiannual budget, industrial competitiveness and energy costs rather than attempting to resolve their strategic disagreements over Russia or Ukraine.

The practical requirement is compartmentalisation. Disagreement must remain attached to the file on which it arises rather than contaminate the entire relationship. Hungary and Poland may differ over military involvement in Ukraine while still coordinating before an EU budget negotiation. Slovakia may oppose the timetable for ending Russian gas imports while supporting Czech and Polish demands to protect industrial competitiveness. Czechia may participate in wider European security coalitions while working with the other V4 governments on agricultural policy. Cooperation becomes possible when governments accept that disagreement in one field does not invalidate coordination in another.

This represents a reversal of the mechanism that weakened the group after 2022. Under Orbán, disputes concerning Russia and Ukraine were repeatedly elevated into conflicts over trust, loyalty and the overall direction of the region. Security disagreement consequently reduced cooperation even on policy files that were not directly related to the war. The transactional model attempts to make disagreement divisible. It does not resolve the conflict; it limits the number of areas that the conflict can disable.

The second characteristic is output-based legitimacy. An ideological bloc can derive cohesion from shared narratives and symbolic confrontation even when it produces few measurable policy results. A transactional coalition must repeatedly demonstrate usefulness. The current governments have therefore framed Visegrád in terms of lower energy costs, protected cohesion and agricultural funding, stronger infrastructure and increased regional influence over European decisions. Robert Fico has described the group’s approximately 65 million citizens as a basis for participating in the creation of European policy rather than merely receiving decisions made elsewhere. Hungary’s government has likewise emphasised tangible results rather than ideological uniformity.

This makes the coalition less theatrical but more demanding. The success of the V4 after 2015 could sometimes be measured through political visibility: whether its opposition attracted attention, delayed an EU proposal or projected a recognisable Central European position. The revived group will be assessed by a stricter test. Did coordination alter the distribution of EU resources? Did it modify an energy proposal? Did it secure additional infrastructure commitments? Did it protect regional industries or agricultural interests? If cooperation produces only photographs and declarations, transactionality will offer no reason for governments with alternative partners to remain invested.

The third characteristic is non-exclusivity. The emerging V4 is not designed to replace other coalitions. It is intended to help its members enter them from a stronger position. The Bratislava summit used the V4+ format to present regional priorities directly to Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin, whose government held the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. In agriculture, the four states expanded cooperation to Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia through a V4+4 meeting that produced joint declarations on crisis management and the future of the Common Agricultural Policy. Czechia has simultaneously pursued a joint competitiveness and energy package with Italy. These initiatives indicate that Visegrád is functioning not as a closed voting camp but as a starting point for constructing wider coalitions.

The revived group is therefore best understood as a coalition multiplier. The four members identify a minimum common position, coordinate its presentation and then seek additional partners inside the EU. Visegrád’s value does not come simply from combining four governments. It comes from reducing the costs of initial coordination and giving other states a prepared regional position around which a broader coalition can form.

This also explains why non-exclusivity is indispensable. None of the four governments can afford to organise its entire European strategy around Visegrád. Poland requires cooperation with the major European military powers and the eastern flank. Czechia seeks partners beyond Central Europe in industry and defence. Slovakia also uses the Slavkov format and bilateral relations, while Hungary’s reintegration depends on rebuilding connections across the Union. The V4 can remain useful only if participation supplements rather than restricts these relationships.

The fourth characteristic is low institutional commitment. Visegrád possesses a rotating presidency, recurrent ministerial meetings and a network of working-level contacts, but the International Visegrád Fund remains its only fully institutionalised platform. The political group does not have a powerful permanent secretariat capable of imposing a common agenda or enforcing compliance. This limited institutionalisation has often been presented as a weakness. Under transactional conditions, however, it can also be an advantage. Governments can intensify coordination where returns are high without having to resolve every political disagreement first.

The cost is that continuity depends heavily on political attention. A coalition without strong institutions can adapt quickly, but it can also lose momentum quickly. Rotating presidencies must keep producing meetings, ministerial follow-up and common positions. The revived V4 therefore requires enough institutional repetition to prevent every negotiation from beginning again at zero, but not so much political integration that cooperation becomes dependent on a unity the four governments do not possess.

The likely scope of transactional cooperation can be organised into an informal hierarchy.

The strongest coordination potential lies in the EU budget, cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy. All four governments seek to preserve substantial resources for regional convergence and agriculture in the next financial framework. Their positions are not identical: Poland emphasises external-border expenditure, Czechia the treatment of industrial economies, Slovakia regional inequalities and Hungary access to cohesion resources. Yet these demands can be combined within a common argument that newer priorities should not be financed by hollowing out policies of particular importance to Central Europe. The June V4+4 agricultural declarations demonstrate that this convergence can already produce sectoral documents and broader regional coalitions.

A second high-potential field is energy and industrial competitiveness. The four economies remain sensitive to energy prices, carbon costs, the future of manufacturing and the regulation of transport and automotive production. At Bratislava, the leaders agreed to oppose measures that would further increase energy costs and linked the issue directly to the protection of European industry. The precise preferred solutions will differ: Slovakia and Hungary attach greater importance to continued access to Russian supplies, while Czechia and Poland pursue different diversification and security strategies. Nevertheless, a common minimum position can form around the proposition that European climate, energy and industrial policies must not accelerate deindustrialisation in the region.

Transport, energy interconnection and cross-border infrastructure also offer strong prospects because they create divisible and geographically concentrated benefits. North-south corridors, grid connections and border infrastructure do not require a common ideology. They require agreement on financing, sequencing and implementation. Projects of this kind may lack the symbolic visibility of earlier V4 disputes with Brussels, but they are particularly compatible with a coalition seeking measurable outputs.

Coordination on migration and external-border protection is likely to remain significant, although less uniform than during the 2015 crisis. The four governments continue to favour stronger external-border control and resist policies they believe would increase domestic costs or remove national discretion. Poland’s current emphasis is also distributive: expenditure incurred in protecting the EU’s eastern border should be recognised in the next European budget. Migration can therefore sustain V4 coordination, but the basis is likely to be a mixture of security, financing and administrative responsibility rather than the comprehensive cultural confrontation that characterised the group’s most ideological period.

EU enlargement occupies a more conditional position. The four governments generally support the European perspective of the Western Balkans, and Slovakia has placed enlargement among the priorities of its V4 presidency. Czechia has also advocated faster accession for leading Western Balkan candidates. Ukraine is more difficult because enlargement is entangled with security, minority rights, reconstruction costs and the war itself. The V4 may therefore coordinate on the principle of enlargement while diverging over candidates, conditions and sequencing.

The lowest coordination potential remains in the areas that require a shared strategic interpretation rather than a divisible policy bargain. These include military support for Ukraine, relations with Russia, the future of sanctions and the pace of ending Russian energy dependence. Czechia continues to participate in wider coalitions supporting Ukraine and European defence, while Slovakia has opposed EU decisions to end Russian gas imports. Such differences do not prevent cooperation on energy affordability, but they do prevent the V4 from becoming a coherent security coalition.

The same limitation applies to the constitutional direction of the EU and the relationship between national sovereignty, democratic conditionality and European authority. Tusk, Magyar, Babiš and Fico do not share a single theory of liberal democracy or European integration. Any attempt to reconstruct the V4 as a common ideological front on these questions would reproduce precisely the expectation of unity that the transactional model is designed to avoid.

The central resource of the new coalition is therefore issue divisibility. The more easily governments can separate one policy dispute from another, the more viable Visegrád cooperation becomes. The less divisible an issue is, because it concerns fundamental security commitments, government legitimacy or the constitutional organisation of Europe, the less likely the four states are to sustain a common position.

This does not make the transactional V4 politically insignificant. It changes the form of its potential influence. The previous bloc gained attention through confrontation and ideological recognisability. The emerging coalition may gain influence through preparation, repetition and expansion: identifying shared exposure, constructing a minimum position, coordinating before EU negotiations and using the V4+ format to attract additional partners.

A bloc asks who belongs to the political camp. A transactional coalition asks on which files cooperation pays.

The second question is less dramatic, but it may provide a more durable foundation for the four governments that neither possess nor seek complete political unity. The new V4 does not need a common answer to the future of Europe. It needs a sufficient number of common answers to the decisions Europe is presently making.

Whether it can produce those answers consistently is the next test. A transactional coalition cannot be evaluated by the frequency of its summits alone. It must be assessed by whether coordination progresses from meetings to common positions, from common positions to broader coalitions and from broader coalitions to identifiable policy outcomes.

The Visegrád Bargaining Test: What Would Count As A Real Revival?

Declarations of revival are politically useful but analytically insufficient. Leaders can restore summit diplomacy, announce that a regional format has returned and identify a broad list of shared interests without demonstrating that the group has recovered the capacity to shape policy. This distinction is especially important for the post-Orbán V4. Because the emerging coalition is justified by practical results rather than ideological unity, its success cannot be measured primarily through political visibility. A transactional coalition must prove that it can convert repeated interaction into common positions and common positions into outcomes.

A real revival should therefore be assessed through a five-part bargaining test: coordination frequency, common-position formation, coalition expansion, policy delivery and durability under disagreement. These criteria form a sequence rather than five interchangeable indicators. Frequent meetings without common positions produce dialogue but little leverage. Common positions without external partners may remain regionally confined. Coalition expansion without policy delivery produces visibility rather than influence. Policy gains that disappear after the first major disagreement do not demonstrate durability.

The relevant question is consequently not whether the V4 has restarted. It is how far it has moved along the chain from contact restoration to bargaining effectiveness.

The first test is the routinisation of coordination. The renewed format has already passed an initial version of this test. The June 2026 Gödöllő summit was the first meeting of the four prime ministers since February 2024. Its joint statement did more than endorse future cooperation: it instructed ministers and officials responsible for EU affairs to restore coordination channels and required the relevant ministries to identify by the end of 2026 regional projects capable of delivering visible benefits to V4 citizens. Within the following three months, agriculture ministers met in the expanded V4+4 format, foreign ministers resumed dialogue after a two-year interruption, parliamentary economic representatives discussed competitiveness and artificial intelligence, and the prime ministers met again in Bratislava. In September, the Slovak presidency also convened the first V4+India foreign ministers’ meeting.

This density matters because informal regional cooperation depends heavily on repetition. The V4 has no powerful permanent secretariat capable of sustaining political coordination when governments lose interest. Its working capacity, therefore, rests on meetings occurring frequently enough for officials to exchange information, prepare a common language and anticipate one another’s preferences before EU negotiations begin. A single summit can express political intention. Routinised consultations create the possibility of institutional memory.

The existing evidence nevertheless covers only a short period. Much of the current momentum has been driven by the end of Hungary’s presidency and the activist opening of Slovakia’s 2026–2027 term. Coordination will become genuinely institutionalised only if it survives beyond a favourable presidency, continues across several European Council cycles and becomes normal at ministerial and official levels rather than remaining dependent on prime-ministerial intervention. The first test is therefore provisionally passed: political contact has been restored, but long-term routinisation is not yet established.

The second test is whether frequent contact produces codified common positions. The Gödöllő declaration offers stronger evidence than general statements of regional friendship. It identified the next Multiannual Financial Framework, cohesion and agricultural policy, the resilience of the single market, merit-based enlargement, the balance between the green transition and competitiveness, revision of the Emissions Trading System, automotive regulation, trade policy and north-south infrastructure as fields for coordinated action. It also included digitalisation, artificial intelligence, cross-border cybersecurity and public services within the regional agenda.

Sectoral cooperation has begun to turn some of this agenda into agreed texts. The June V4+4 agricultural meeting produced two joint declarations: one on crisis management and farm resilience under the Common Agricultural Policy, and another on bioeconomy, water management and extreme weather. At Bratislava, the four prime ministers agreed on common objectives concerning the next EU budget, protection of cohesion and agricultural spending, energy affordability and stronger coordination before European Council meetings.

These developments indicate movement from agenda convergence towards position formation, but the distinction between them remains important. Governments may agree that energy prices are too high without agreeing on whether the remedy should involve ETS reform, electricity-market redesign, extended use of Russian supplies, greater interconnection or additional common financing. They may all defend cohesion policy while assigning different priorities to regional development, industrial modernisation, border security and access to funds. A list of common concerns is therefore not yet a common negotiating position.

The stronger test will be whether the V4 can produce agreed documents containing priorities, sequencing and red lines before decisive EU negotiations. In the budget debate, for example, a meaningful common position would specify which spending areas must be protected, which new priorities can be accepted, how the burden should be distributed and what concessions the four governments would jointly resist. Common positions become politically consequential only when they constrain national behaviour sufficiently to make collective bargaining credible.

The third test is coalition expansion. Four Central European governments can attract attention, but they rarely possess enough votes or economic weight to determine major EU outcomes by themselves. The transactional V4 must therefore operate as the coalition multiplier identified in the previous section: first agreeing on a regional minimum and then attracting partners capable of turning that position into a broader European coalition.

The early record is encouraging. The agricultural V4+4 format incorporated Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia and generated joint sectoral declarations. Foreign ministers revived V4+Japan cooperation in September, while the Bratislava summit brought the V4 directly together with Ireland, then holding the presidency of the Council of the EU. Later that month, the first V4+India foreign ministers’ meeting created a new dialogue covering trade, investment, technology, resilient supply chains, defence, connectivity, education and mobility. Slovakia has also expressed interest in convening a V4+Germany meeting.

Not every expanded meeting demonstrates bargaining influence. Some V4+ encounters may serve diplomatic visibility, bilateral relationship-building or the priorities of the rotating presidency rather than the advancement of a genuinely common V4 position. The relevant test is therefore functional: does the external partner engage with the four governments as a collective interlocutor, and does the meeting help advance an identifiable regional proposal?

The Irish meeting was particularly significant in this respect because it connected V4 demands on the budget, energy and competitiveness to the government managing the Council’s negotiating agenda. V4+India demonstrates a different form of expansion: using the regional format to create a recurring diplomatic and economic relationship that would be more costly for each member to organise separately. Coalition expansion has therefore begun, but its success will depend on whether these formats generate follow-up mechanisms and policy commitments rather than multiplying ceremonial encounters.

The fourth and most demanding test is policy delivery. A bargaining coalition becomes effective only when its coordination produces an outcome distinguishable from what its members could have achieved individually. The appropriate evidence would include changes to European Council conclusions, protection or reallocation of budgetary resources, modification of energy or emissions rules, financing for regional infrastructure, or implementation of proposals first developed through V4 ministerial cooperation.

As of early October 2026, this stage has not yet been demonstrated conclusively. The official record establishes renewed coordination, joint declarations and access to external partners. It does not yet establish an EU-level decision that can be attributed with confidence to V4 bargaining. The Irish presidency’s revised budget proposal reportedly preserved agricultural and regional spending more strongly than several other expenditure categories, which is compatible with the preferences expressed at Bratislava. Compatibility, however, is not evidence of causation: the same result is supported by numerous member states and domestic constituencies outside the V4.

The attribution problem is central. A policy outcome should not be counted as a Visegrád success merely because it resembles a demand made by one or more V4 governments. Evidence of influence would require a clearer chain: an agreed regional position, coordinated intervention, expansion towards additional partners and an identifiable change in the negotiated outcome. Without that chain, policy congruence may reflect parallel national preferences rather than collective leverage.

The Czech-Italian package on energy costs and industrial competitiveness illustrates both the flexibility and the measurement problem of the emerging model. Its objectives overlap substantially with themes discussed in the V4, but Prague chose to advance detailed proposals through a bilateral coalition with Italy before the October European Council. This does not necessarily indicate V4 failure. Under a non-exclusive model, Visegrád may help identify a regional concern that members subsequently promote through larger or more strategically useful coalitions. Yet the V4’s contribution must remain traceable if the group is to claim the resulting policy change as evidence of its own effectiveness.

Policy delivery should therefore be evaluated through additionality. Did the V4 produce a stronger position, attract partners or change the outcome in a way that would probably not have occurred through four separate national strategies? If the answer is no, the group may remain a useful consultative forum without becoming an effective bargaining coalition.

The fifth test is durability under disagreement. This is ultimately more important than the number of declarations or external meetings. The post-Orbán model is explicitly designed to permit cooperation among governments that remain divided over fundamental questions. Its success will therefore depend on whether disagreement can occur without producing institutional exit.

There is preliminary evidence of compartmentalisation. The detailed Gödöllő programme avoided manufacturing a common position on military support for Ukraine or relations with Russia and concentrated instead on EU policies where agreement was attainable. The foreign ministers subsequently met with Japan and India, while the prime ministers coordinated on the EU budget and energy despite continuing differences over the security meaning of Russia and the timetable for ending dependence on Russian fuels. Slovakia, for example, has remained strongly opposed to EU measures terminating Russian gas imports.

This shows that disagreement no longer prevents every form of interaction. It does not yet prove that the coalition can withstand a new high-intensity dispute. The decisive test will arise when the four governments confront a divisive vote or crisis concerning sanctions, military support, Ukraine’s accession, Russian energy or the EU’s institutional authority. If ministerial coordination in unrelated fields continues afterwards, the transactional model will have demonstrated genuine resilience. If meetings are cancelled, common projects suspended or policy disagreement again reframed as political betrayal, the revival will have reproduced the weakness of the earlier V4.

Durability should therefore be observed through several behaviours: whether scheduled meetings proceed after public disagreements; whether sectoral channels remain active; whether common positions survive changes of government and rotating presidencies; whether states continue implementing agreements while joining different coalitions elsewhere; and whether leaders avoid turning disagreement on one dossier into a general test of loyalty.

The strongest evidence of revival would not be the absence of conflict. It would be disagreement without institutional withdrawal.

Measured against these five tests, the current V4 record is mixed but meaningful. It has clearly restored high-level contact and begun to routinise coordination. It has partially passed the common-position test by defining a detailed agenda and producing several formal sectoral documents. It has made promising progress in coalition expansion through V4+, including engagement with Ireland, Japan, India and a wider group of Central and South-Eastern European agricultural states. It has not yet demonstrated policy delivery attributable to collective bargaining, and its durability under renewed strategic disagreement remains untested.

The most precise conclusion at this stage is therefore that the V4 has been politically reactivated but not yet proven effective or durable.

That distinction should not be interpreted as scepticism about the entire project. Political reactivation is a necessary achievement after several years of paralysis. It is simply not the final standard. For a transactional regional coalition, success requires movement along the entire sequence:

Regular coordination → codified common positions → wider coalition-building → identifiable policy outcomes → continued cooperation after disagreement

A Visegrád revival will be real when its meetings become predictable, its positions consequential and its cooperation resilient. The test is not merely whether the four governments can sit at the same table again. It is whether they can disagree, continue coordinating and make Europe respond.

Conclusion: Revival Without Reunion

The central question facing the Visegrád Group is no longer whether it still exists. It never disappeared institutionally. Its rotating presidency continued, ministerial and sectoral contacts survived, and the International Visegrád Fund preserved cooperation below the level of high politics. The more consequential question is whether the V4 can again produce political value for its governments and influence outcomes beyond the region.

The answer depends on recognising that there was never a single, permanent model of Visegrád cooperation. The group began as an instrument of democratic transformation and Euro-Atlantic integration, later developed into a flexible platform for sectoral coordination and acquired its most visible political identity during the migration crisis after 2015. That period was sustained primarily through negative coordination. The four governments could agree on policies they wished to resist without developing a comprehensive common vision of Europe.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine exposed the limits of that model. Migration policy had rewarded veto cohesion: governments could generate influence by coordinating opposition to particular European proposals. War demanded something more difficult. It required a shared assessment of military threats, acceptable risks, economic costs and strategic obligations. Poland and Czechia regarded support for Ukraine and the containment of Russia as central to their own security. Hungary under Viktor Orbán, and later Slovakia under Robert Fico, defined their interests differently. The resulting division did not formally abolish the V4. It deprived the format of comparative usefulness on the issue that had become most important to the region.

Orbán’s electoral defeat created an opportunity to reverse that decline, but it did not produce a new strategic consensus. Péter Magyar altered Hungary’s method of regional and European bargaining more clearly than he transformed every Hungarian preference. Budapest moved from recurrent categorical obstruction towards conditional participation: restoring relations with Poland, reopening coordination within the V4 and demonstrating greater willingness to separate disagreement in one field from cooperation in another. The change removed a major regional veto point. It did not create a common foreign policy.

This distinction explains both the possibilities and the limits of the revived group. Donald Tusk, Péter Magyar, Andrej Babiš and Robert Fico do not share a single understanding of European integration, liberal democracy, Russia or Ukraine. Their governments also do not depend on the V4 to the same degree. Poland seeks European leverage without regional dependence. Hungary seeks reintegration without abandoning national bargaining. Czechia seeks policy-specific economic and regulatory gains without diplomatic exclusivity. Slovakia seeks to amplify its influence through regional leadership while preventing divisive security issues from paralysing the format.

These motivations are different, but they can remain compatible. The renewed V4 is therefore best understood not as a restored ideological bloc but as a transactional regional coalition. Its cohesion is organised around policy dossiers rather than an indivisible political identity. Governments cooperate where repeated coordination produces greater returns than separate national action and retain the freedom to form different coalitions elsewhere.

This model possesses four defining features. Its scope is selective rather than comprehensive. Its legitimacy depends on measurable policy results rather than symbolic confrontation. Its cooperation is non-exclusive, using the V4 as a starting point for wider coalitions rather than as a closed diplomatic camp. Its institutional commitments remain limited, allowing flexibility but making continuity dependent on sustained political attention.

The likely geography of cooperation follows from these characteristics. The V4 has its strongest prospects where interests are material, recurrent and divisible: the EU budget, cohesion funding, the Common Agricultural Policy, energy affordability, industrial competitiveness, transport links and cross-border infrastructure. Migration and external-border protection may also sustain coordination, although increasingly through arguments about financing, administrative responsibility and security rather than the comprehensive cultural confrontation that characterised the group’s earlier ideological phase.

The coalition will remain considerably weaker where cooperation requires a shared hierarchy of threats or a common constitutional vision. Military assistance to Ukraine, relations with Russia, sanctions, the timetable for ending Russian energy dependence and the distribution of authority between national governments and EU institutions continue to reveal fundamental differences. A transactional V4 can manage these divisions only by preventing them from becoming tests of loyalty across every other policy field.

The central resource of the revived group is therefore issue divisibility. Cooperation becomes possible when a disagreement remains attached to the dossier that produced it. It collapses when conflict in one field is allowed to contaminate the entire relationship. This is the most important institutional lesson of the post-2022 crisis and the principal condition for the success of the post-Orbán model.

The early evidence is meaningful but incomplete. High-level dialogue has resumed. Ministerial contacts have become more frequent. Common agendas and sectoral declarations have emerged. The V4+ format has again been used to engage additional European and external partners. These developments show that the group has been politically reactivated.

They do not yet prove that it has regained bargaining effectiveness.

A genuine revival requires progression from regular consultation to codified common positions, from common positions to wider coalition-building and from wider coalitions to identifiable policy outcomes. It must also survive disagreement. The decisive evidence will not be another summit photograph or declaration of Central European unity. It will be the continuation of sectoral coordination after a divisive vote on Ukraine, Russia, energy or European institutional authority.

The most accurate judgement at this stage is therefore that the V4 has returned as a political process, but not yet as a proven policy-producing coalition. Its future will depend on whether it generates additionality: influence, resources or coordination that its members could not have obtained as effectively through bilateral diplomacy or alternative formats.

This makes the emerging V4 simultaneously less ambitious and potentially more sustainable than its predecessor. It is less ambitious because it does not attempt to organise four governments around a common political interpretation of Europe. It may be more sustainable because it does not require every disagreement to threaten the coalition’s existence.

The old V4 derived much of its visibility from ideological convergence and coordinated resistance. The emerging V4 may derive its durability from functional selectivity and managed disagreement. Its success will not be demonstrated by the absence of conflict among its members, but by their ability to disagree without withdrawing from the institutions and bargains that remain useful.

Visegrád may therefore return without reuniting: less coherent as a political camp, less dramatic as a symbol of Central European defiance, but potentially more usable as a regional bargaining coalition. The new V4 does not need a common answer to the future of Europe. It needs sufficient agreement on enough of Europe’s present decisions, and the institutional discipline to continue cooperating when that agreement ends.