V4 resists Germany’s budget squeeze

Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary met last week in Gödöllő, Hungary, for their first formal leaders’ summit in years. The Visegrad Four had effectively fallen apart after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when the four governments could no longer pretend they saw Moscow in the same way.

Those divisions are still there. They have not been settled, or even softened very much. What has changed is the battlefield. The EU’s next seven-year budget is coming, and in that fight a small regional caucus can make itself harder to ignore.

Old Spending, New Bills, No One Wants to Cut

The EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework, or MFF, is the budget plan that fixes spending ceilings and categories for seven years. The next one covers 2028–2034 and needs unanimous approval from all 27 member states, as well as the European Parliament’s consent. That gives every capital, large or small, a blocking power.

Two big items have dominated EU spending for decades: cohesion policy, which funds poorer regions as they catch up, and farm payments under the Common Agricultural Policy. Both have strong defenders. The problem is that the old budget has new claims on it: defence, long-term support for Ukraine, enlargement costs and repayment of the NextGenerationEU pandemic debt (ECA, Euronews). Something will have to move. No government is rushing to say what.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is leading the squeeze. He has rejected a budget of almost two trillion euro and ruled out fresh EU common borrowing (FAZ, Zeit). The Netherlands, Austria and Sweden are broadly with him: keep the overall ceiling down and do not borrow again at EU level.

On the other side, a Friends of Cohesion group of about 16 or 17 states, including Italy, Spain, Portugal and all four V4 countries, has signed a declaration arguing that cohesion and CAP money should not be cut to finance the newer priorities (Spanish Foreign Ministry, EUNews).

A Caucus, Not a Comeback

The Gödöllő summit fits inside that wider budget alliance. At the press conference, the four leaders identified cohesion, CAP, energy prices and emissions-trading reform as shared priorities. They also agreed to resume consultations before every European Council summit (AP/SFGate, Denník N). Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said the V4 wanted to be "very strong again". Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš pointed to what he called an unacceptable fall in Czechia’s allocation and linked V4 coordination to getting the most from the budget (ČT24).

The coordination is real, but it has limits. Four countries acting together do not acquire a special veto, because Article 312 TFEU already gives each member state that power. What they gain is political mass. A disciplined Central European caucus makes cohesion cuts harder to sell and can influence the compromise before leaders reach the final summit table.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stressed cooperation with Italy and other states beyond the V4 (PAP). Polish and Czech reporting also describes the group as a sub-caucus inside Friends of Cohesion, rather than a standalone bloc (Business Insider Polska, Aktuálně.cz).

German sources read it much the same way from the other side. Merz has acknowledged that his savings line is not the majority view among leaders (n-tv). Berlin sees this as a familiar payer-versus-recipient negotiation, rather than a special Visegrad problem.

Allies Today, Competitors Tomorrow

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni convened the Friends of Cohesion meeting ahead of the June European Council, where heads of state and government set EU direction. Her argument was that cohesion and CAP should not be raided to subsidise new spending lines (Sky TG24). On the budget, Rome needs Eastern votes against frugal cuts.

Italian outlets have already flagged the awkward next chapter. EU enlargement eastwards, especially Ukrainian accession, could pull agricultural and cohesion money towards newer members and put pressure on current Southern recipients (Quotidiano Nazionale). The countries defending EU funds are aligned against cuts now. Once the overall envelope is fixed, they will be competing over what is left.

No public V4 document setting out concrete budget demands or red lines emerged from Gödöllő (Telex). Final national allocation tables for the 2028–2034 MFF do not yet exist, so claims about winners and losers are still bargaining positions. The press conference showed the easy part: agreeing that someone else should pay. The harder part begins when the Commission puts figures beside each country’s name.