V4 fights Germany’s budget squeeze

Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary met last week in Gödöllő, Hungary, for their first formal leaders' summit in years. The meeting brought the Visegrad Four back into use after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine exposed divisions over Moscow that the format could not absorb. Those divisions have not disappeared. The four governments are setting them aside because the EU's next seven-year budget is one of the few fights where acting together can still pay.

Old Spending, New Bills, No Easy Cuts

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, plus the European Parliament's consent. Malta has the same formal veto as Germany or France, even if the political weight behind it is different.

For Maltese readers, this is not remote Brussels bookkeeping. Cohesion policy, the EU money used to help poorer regions catch up, has shaped infrastructure, public projects and local investment across the Union. Farm subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy have done the same for rural economies, even in countries where agriculture is a small part of GDP.

Those two lines have dominated EU budgets for decades and both have strong defenders. The pressure now comes from new bills landing on the same table: defence, long-term support for Ukraine, the costs of EU enlargement and repayment of the NextGenerationEU pandemic debt (ECA, Euronews). Something has to move. No government is eager to say what should be cut.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is leading the squeeze. He has rejected a budget close to two trillion euro and has ruled out new common EU borrowing (FAZ, Zeit). The Netherlands, Austria and Sweden are broadly with him: keep total spending down and do not borrow more together.

Against that, a Friends of Cohesion group of around 16 to 17 states, including Italy, Spain, Portugal and all four V4 countries, has signed a declaration insisting that cohesion and CAP should not be raided to fund new priorities (Spanish Foreign Ministry, EUNews).

A Caucus, Not a Comeback

The Gödöllő summit fits inside that wider budget alliance. At the press conference, all four leaders named cohesion, CAP, energy prices and reform of emissions trading 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 described as an unacceptable fall in Czechia's allocation and linked V4 coordination to getting the maximum possible value from the budget (ČT24).

The coordination matters, but it has limits. Four countries acting together under unanimity do not acquire a special veto: Article 312 TFEU already gives every member state that power. What they gain is leverage before the final deal is written.

A disciplined Central European caucus raises the political cost of cutting cohesion and helps shape the compromise text before leaders sit down for the last round. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stressed cooperation with Italy and others beyond the V4 (PAP). Polish and Czech reporting also describe the group as a sub-caucus within Friends of Cohesion, not a bloc standing on its own (Business Insider Polska, Aktuálně.cz).

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

Allies Today, Competitors Tomorrow

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

Italian media are already pointing to the awkward next stage. EU enlargement eastward, especially Ukrainian accession, could shift agricultural and cohesion money towards newer members and squeeze today's Southern recipients (Quotidiano Nazionale). The countries defending EU funds are aligned against cuts now. Once the overall envelope is fixed, they will compete over what remains.

No public V4 document with detailed budget demands or red lines came out of 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 real test starts when the Commission puts numbers beside each country's name.