PRAGUE -- The Visegrad group, bringing together the four Central European EU and NATO members -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia -- might not be dead yet, but it sure is on life support, and will continue to be so for a while yet. That is the obvious conclusion one can draw from the summit of the group's four prime ministers in Prague on February 27.
It was not too long ago that the Visegrad Group (or V4 as it normally is referred to) was a real player when it came to deal making in the corridors of power in Brussels. Created back in 1991, it forms one of the oldest informal political alliances within both the EU and NATO.
What started off as a cooperation platform at the end of the Cold War for the quartet to get rid of decades of Soviet legacy and to promote each other's entry into Western political organizations and institutions, it quickly transformed into a bloc not to be scoffed at inside those same political structures.
On their own, the four could easily be ignored by heavyweights such as Germany and France but unified, representing nearly 65 million citizens, they shaped European policies on various fields such as immigration, agriculture and even foreign policy.
It is on perhaps the foreign policy item of the day in Europe that the grouping has come unstuck -- the war in Ukraine. Here a canyon-like divergence has become so apparent that it wouldn't be out of order to speak of a V2+V2.
On the one hand, the Czech Republic and Poland, as two of the strongest supporters of Kyiv in terms of political and military support, argue for even more and faster arms delivers to the war-torn country. And far away, in the other corner, Hungary and Slovakia refuse to send weapons east and want "peace" at seemingly any cost, with especially the former having developed a distinct policy of watering down Russia sanctions, questioning Ukraine's EU integration and at one point even blocking EU aid for Kyiv.
It was quite telling that the bilateral meeting between the Czech and Polish prime ministers, Petr Fiala and Donald Tusk, in the morning before the V4 summit lasted longer than the actual summit.
According to Czech diplomats, that morning discussion was "very cordial," with agreement on pretty much everything and Poland signaling readiness to support Prague's initiative to buy much-needed ammunition for Ukraine from third countries and deliver it as quickly as possible.
The press conference with the quartet after the V4 meeting was a whole different affair, with tense smiles and everyone more or less admitting that views differed widely.
Fiala, whose country holds the yearlong V4 presidency till the end of June before Poland takes over, put on a brave face and defended the need to meet in person and even found two items regarding Ukraine that they all could agree on: that Russia's aggression is against international law and that Ukraine needs help -- the difference on the latter is how.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was quick to point out that Budapest wasn't against humanitarian nor financial help, talking up how Hungarian doctors are helping on the front lines.
Then it descended into two different narratives.
While Tusk insisted that the West should never compromise on core issues such as independence and territorial integrity and Fiala underlined that Russia should not be rewarded for its aggressive policies, Orban and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico talked of the need of an immediate cease-fire, that the war cannot be resolved with more weapons, and that Kyiv and Moscow will be in the same place in two years' time but with tens of thousands more dead.
So, clearly no agreement yet on how 2+2 could become four again on Ukraine, even if they quickly made clear to the assembled media that there was one more thing they could all agree on the war: that none of them was prepared to send its soldiers to fight in Ukraine, seemingly rebuffing a remark by French President Emmanuel Macron after a Ukraine-related meeting in Paris the day before, in which he noted that Western countries in the future could not rule out sending men and women in uniform to back Kyiv in the war.
Beyond Ukraine, however, it actually seems that the V4 might be in rude health.
Fiala mentioned that they saw eye to eye on energy, notably the need of more nuclear energy; that they had a common hard-line stance on "illegal migration," notably the aversion to mandatory EU quotas to distribute migrants inside the club; and that they didn't want sweeping changes inside the EU, towards a more "federal" union with fewer national vetoes.
And then of course there was agriculture, where they all agreed that the EU's Green Deal, which should pave the way for no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, should not come at the cost of EU farmers' competitiveness. And with farmers all over Europe protesting, largely due to increased production costs, this is something worth taking note of.
And here Tusk is in a tight spot. While wanting to support Ukraine as much as possible, he also needs to pay attention to his country's more than 1 million farmers -- a super influential voting group that is now blocking the Ukrainian border and Ukrainian farm produce from entering.
His rather anguished look when pronouncing that solidarity with Ukraine, in this case an EU deal to allow tariff-free Ukrainian goods into the bloc, could not come at the expense of Polish businesses, showed that he found it hard squaring a circle.
One could also detect a smirk on the faces of Fico and Orban here. The four leaders might not admit as much right now, but the V4 could, if it survives, agree that the narrow national interest of each of them, in the end, trumps any solidarity with Ukraine.
