V4 leaders in Hungary to discuss top EU posts
PR dla Zagranicy
Julian Horodyski
13.06.2019 14:00
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was on Thursday scheduled to attend a meeting in Budapest with his regional V4 counterparts to discuss candidates for top jobs in the EU.
Slovakian PM Peter Pellegrini, Czech PM Andrej Babis, Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban. Photo: EPA/HUNGARIAN PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE
The four-nation Visegrad Group (V4) is a regional cooperation platform that brings together Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The gathering in Budapest was set to bring together prime ministers from the group to set out a strategy for a post-European Parliament election summit of EU leaders on June 20-21 in Brussels.
The new heads of the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament are expected to be appointed after the Brussels summit, in addition to the next chief of the European Central Bank and the new EU top diplomat.
“The V4 wants to go to next week's summit in Brussels with a shared stance,” Czech daily Lidove Noviny reported on Wednesday.
Speaking after an informal meeting of EU leaders in Brussels in May, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that appointments to top European Union jobs should be balanced and key positions should be filled by people with experience in politics and an ability to build consensus.
“We stressed the necessity to build a balanced package: small countries vs. big, northern, southern, central European countries, a representation of … ‘New Europe’ countries, which face different problems in terms of the economy and budget,” Morawiecki said at the time, as quoted by the PAP news agency.
Before the summit, Morawiecki was also quoted by PAP as saying that the Polish government aimed to ensure that a new set of top EU officials would work for a European Union “free from protectionism, supporting the common market,” and “ensuring a good budget for the next term.”
(jh/pk)
Source: PAP