Can the Visegrád Four Return Under Hungary’s New Prime Minister?

For the past few years, the Visegrád Four has looked less like a functioning alliance than a hollow framework. Russia’s war against Ukraine, diverging security outlooks and increasingly different national strategies pushed the group into political paralysis. That is why the scene in Yerevan mattered. The Czech, Polish and Slovak prime ministers appeared together, while Robert Fico said Slovakia would support Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. According to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Fico also offered Slovak experience with the accession process.

That does not mean the V4 is suddenly back. It does mean that Central Europe is once again testing the possibility of coordination. And with a new government in Budapest, the group may, for the first time in years, have a chance to regain political relevance.

Born Out of Transition, Not Ideology

When the Visegrád cooperation was founded on 15 February 1991, its purpose was straightforward. Václav Havel, Lech Wałęsa and József Antall were not creating an ideological club. They wanted a framework through which post-communist Central Europe could move more effectively toward NATO and the European Union. The original declaration was about democratic transition, Euro-Atlantic integration and regional cooperation.

That was the V4’s first successful phase. It worked because the members shared a clear historical direction.

When Visegrád Spoke With One Voice

The second strong phase came during the 2015 migration crisis. Then, the four governments found a common political language and coordinated their stance toward Brussels. Joint V4 statements from that period showed a level of alignment that made the group visible as a distinct political force inside the EU.

But that version of the V4 was different from the one created in 1991. It was less about integration and more about collective resistance.

The War That Broke the Bloc

The deepest rupture came after 2022. On the war in Ukraine, the V4 stopped operating from a shared strategic premise. Poland and the Czech Republic took a clearly pro-Ukrainian and strongly anti-Russian line. Hungary remained markedly different. Slovakia moved somewhere in between. From that point on, the group no longer had a common answer to Europe’s central security crisis.

That mattered more than previous disagreements because it went beyond tactics. On migration, the V4 could still speak with one voice. On Russia and Ukraine, it no longer could.

What the Yerevan Moment Really Signals

This is why the Yerevan moment is worth noticing. Not because it resolves the old divide, but because it suggests that the region’s leaders are again looking for overlap. Fico’s support for Ukraine’s EU path does not place Slovakia fully in line with Warsaw or Prague, but it does indicate movement. Reuters’ reporting points to partial convergence, not a full strategic turn, yet even that marks a shift from the stalemate of recent years.

What Yerevan seems to show is not the return of the old V4, but the return of a regional instinct: the sense that Central Europe may again need common platforms as enlargement, security, energy and infrastructure become more important in European politics.

Budapest May Be the Missing Piece

That is where Hungary’s new prime minister becomes central. In recent years, Budapest was not just an outlier; it was often the main internal obstacle to V4 coordination. Its confrontational EU line and distinctive Russia policy weakened the group’s credibility and made common positioning harder.

Now that may be changing. Reuters reports that Peter Magyar held talks with Ursula von der Leyen on frozen EU funds even before formally taking office, and described the meeting as highly constructive. EU institutions also appear to view the incoming Hungarian government as more cooperative than the previous one.

If Budapest does shift toward a more predictable and less confrontational European policy, one of the V4’s biggest internal constraints may disappear.

A Different V4 May Be Taking Shape

Even so, the V4 is unlikely to return in its previous form. It is hard to imagine the group once again acting as a tightly aligned political bloc. A more plausible future is a looser, issue-based format: one that cooperates where interests overlap and diverges where they do not.

That may actually suit the group better. Enlargement, Ukraine’s accession, energy, infrastructure, defense-industrial cooperation and broader Central European coordination are all areas where the Visegrád logic could still matter. That, after all, was always its original purpose: not complete unity, but practical cooperation where shared interests existed.

The Yerevan image may not have marked a V4 comeback. But it did suggest something important: that the region is starting to think of itself as a political space again. With a new government in Hungary, that may be enough to give the format the second chance

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