Magyar takes the lead on V4

Andrej Babiš announced after the cabinet meeting on Mon. that the Visegrad Four is scheduled to meet today before the EU Council meeting in Brussels. It's good, he said, that the new Hungarian PM, Péter Magyar, is taking the lead on this. On a recent trip to Germany, Magyar told Der Spiegel that he wants to see the V4 work more effectively together and would like other countries to join, such as Croatia, Romania and Austria, or even Germany. More controversially, he told FAZ that his country needs to keep buying Russian oil and gas because it can't afford to allow the competitiveness of its companies to continue to decline and energy poverty among Hungarian families to increase. Once the Ukraine war is over, he said, he expects Europe to return to relying on Russian energy to an extent and to lift the sanctions, because what is at stake is the competitiveness of all of Europe. How Prague and Warsaw respond to this will determine to a significant extent the near-term future of the V4 as a power bloc within the EU.