Roundup: V4 top diplomats criticize EU policies, call for stronger EU

The foreign ministers of the Visegrad Group addressed a gathering of Hungarian diplomats here on Monday, criticizing Brussels' policies and lauding their own group.

The Visegrad Group consists of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary, known as the V4.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called the V4 the strongest and most effective alliance in Europe, in part because it dared to be honest as against the hypocrisy and political correctness of the European Union (EU) leadership which was chasing rainbows.

In these turbulent times the common voice of the V4 has become much louder than the individual voices of the member countries, Szijjarto said.

Security should be the top priority of the EU, he said, while policies that are incentives to hundreds of thousands of people to move to Europe need to be forgotten.

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said that Central Europe expected to be taken seriously.

Referring to the NATO Summit held in Warsaw in July, Waszczykowski said that the measures taken by Russia, which shares a common border with Poland, since its dispute with Ukraine began in 2014, had introduced cracks into the NATO security system.

He called it important for the V4 countries to hold joint military exercises and thus contribute to regional and European security.

Speaking about Brexit, he urged the EU to debate its own future, and underlined the need for reform.

Warsaw intended to participate in those discussions "in a loud voice," Waszczykowski said.

He then gave a thumbs up to protective measures on the EU's outer borders and suggested that the EU budget needed to be reworked to support growth instead of having countries rely on the funds received.

Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek acknowledged that the citizens of his country were worried and living in a state of constant uncertainty.

The feelings of stability and security have disappeared, he said, while the work of politicians and diplomats has been reduced to quick fixes instead of real problem solving.

He also called for guaranteeing the stability of the EU after Brexit, which he called the harbinger of radical institutional change. The EU, he said, needs to be unprejudiced and credible, representing compromise and unity, which it not the case today.

Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak noted that the V4 countries, working together, can go much further than separately, adding that the crisis had resulted in even closer cooperation among them.

Slovakia is the current chair of the V4, he said, and is striving to design a pragmatic approach to issues and the setting of concrete goals. The issues concern migration and refugee policies within the Schengen system, he said, and the need for Europe to enhance its global role.

Regarding Brexit, he said the EU had to maintain the closest possible cooperation with Britain, and the current state of flux could not be sustained.

The EU, he said, has two alternatives: it can either respond to the peoples' demands or trigger lasting crisis.

Euroskepticism must not be allowed to grow stronger, said the Slovak minister, because the EU is the solution, not the problem. Endit