Are Sanctions the Visegrad Four’s Last Straw?
The grouping of Central European countries has been
strained before, but this time feels different.
The Visegrad group of Central European countries – Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary – has never had an easy life. Intended to serve as a lobby group for the four post-communist states in wider Europe, it was not wanted by the Czech ruling elite at the time of its creation in the first place. Rather the idea arose around the then-Czech and Polish heads of states, Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa. Then Slovakia turned away from Europe under the autocratic Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar in the 1990s, as nearly did Poland’s euro-skeptic twin brother leaders, Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, in the 2000s. Each time, the V4 was sidelined.
With the sanctions against Russia, we’re witnessing a new split that tests the group’s reason for being.
The Poles have taken a hard line. It is not only the government that fervently supports the EU sanctions. The people, too, are taking in stride the retaliatory Russian ban on foodstuffs, as shown by the spontaneous “Eat Apples” campaign.
The Czechs are less united. The government has backed the sanctions even as the coalition parties question the reasoning behind them and let businesses exploit the situation with demands of compensation for any losses – however minor – unlike in Poland.
The Slovak and Hungarian governments have agreed on the sanctions as well, all the while fighting them outright.
.............
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario