The deputy speaker of the parliament, Tibor Gašpar, rejected the very essence of the case: “All the activities around Szijjártó are related to challenging Orbán and influencing the elections.” The problem for Smer is not the communication with Lavrov, but the fact that the public found out about it.
This framework was fully demonstrated at the conference Sovereign Policy of the Sovereign States of Central Europe, which Gašpar covered. It was said that we should “get rid of fear and stop being slaves to the West”. Russia was presented as a legitimate partner in the multipolar world and the EU as an ideological project detached from reality, from which it is necessary to exit.
It was in this context that the term “anti Globsec” was born as a conscious attempt to build an alternative geopolitical platform against the current value, economic and security framework in which Slovakia is located. Part of it is also the idea that the V4 should become a kind of protest grouping of “sovereign shields” in Central Europe against Brussels. That is, an instrument of resistance to the EU, not a part of it.
Orbán and Fico do not see the red line
This is where the whole dispute about the future of V4 breaks down. The Polish government refuses to cooperate with partners who relativize the security risks of communication and collaboration with Russia. Pro-Russian policy is a red line for it, which makes full cooperation within the V4 practically impossible.
The Czech government is alibis and makes it clear that it would like to continue to cooperate with the Hungarian government under the leadership of Viktor Orbán. However, under pressure from the president and the opposition, he does not take the security dimension of the “Russian mole” in the EU lightly.
It is interesting that the dispute over the security dimension of Szijjártó’s collaboration with Russia is also taking place intensively in Hungary itself. Opposition leader Péter Magyar described the actions of the foreign minister, whom he considers a “close friend of Sergei Lavrov,” to be a “complete betrayal”: “This man betrayed not only his country, but also Europe.”
The Slovak government and the current Hungarian government do not see this red line. Or they don’t want to see her. When Smer representatives talk about “sovereignty”, they are actually legitimizing a policy that relativizes Russian aggression and normalizes communication with a regime that is waging war against its neighbor and that has all EU member states on its list of enemy states.
V4 cannot be restored
When they trivialize and justify Szijjártó’s communications with Lavrov and Sorokin, they do not send a signal of a confident foreign policy. They are sending a signal that they are subordinating their politics to Orbán’s line and that security rules and loyalty within the EU do not apply to them. And that’s exactly why V4 can’t be restored.
Poland, a state that has a historical experience with Russian imperialism written deeper in the collective memory than anyone else in the region, cannot enter into intimate cooperation with partners who consider communication with the Kremlin as “normal” and its criticism as a “campaign”.
Even the Polish national-conservative right-wing around PiS, which was close to Orbán for many years, is now running into the same boundary. Pro-Russianness is not a legitimate alternative in Poland. It is so politically toxic that it has become a disqualification.
Therefore, today’s debate of the Slovak, Czech and Hungarian governments about the V4 is actually fake. Outwardly, they talk about restoring it, but in reality they are doing everything to make it impossible. Thus, they only offer citizens the illusion of a return to strong traditional Central European cooperation. If the V4 is to be functional again, it must be based on elementary trust that the governments of its member countries are not playing a double game between Brussels and Moscow.
If in one part of the region it is true that communication with Lavrov about confidential internal matters of the EU is “normal diplomacy”, and in the other that it is “absolutely disqualifying”, this is not a difference of opinion. It is a difference in the perception of a strategic security threat and a civilizational anchoring.
If Péter Magyar becomes the Hungarian Prime Minister after the parliamentary elections and makes European policy in accordance with his statement about Szijjártó’s betrayal, the discussion on the resumption of cooperation in the V4 format can start again.
