Analysis
EU Values Foresight
Security
Building Civic Resilience: Challenges and Solutions in Central Europe
12 December 2024
3 July 2019
Today the illiberal leaders from CE are cheering, tomorrow they may be lamenting.
Their victory may be shorter lived than any proponents in the V4 capitals would be willing to admit.
1. The V4 prime ministers are relieved that Frans Timmermans was not appointed. Therefore, they can triumphantly claim that the “EU has been defended from the great evil of inquisition” on the grounds of rule of law, much owed to the united veto from the Visegrad Group and Italy.
Zoltan Kovacs summed up the collective narrative of Budapest and Warsaw: “we have put on the EU table a package that is winning acceptance among a growing number of member countries: the Visegrad Four support German Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen as the next EU Commission president.”