V4 Leaders Meet in Hungary Without Orbán as Magyar Hosts Regional Summit

The leaders of the four Visegrad Group nations gathered in Gödöllő, Hungary, for a regional summit hosted by Hungary's new Prime Minister Péter Magyar — notably without former Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, whose long tenure had defined the bloc's recent direction. Magyar brought together Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš at the historic Grassalkovich estate, signaling a potential reset in the regional alliance's tone and dynamics. The Visegrad Group, commonly known as V4, is a political and cultural alliance of four Central European EU member states — Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic — formed in 1991 to coordinate policy on issues of shared regional interest, including EU affairs, security, and economic cooperation. Under Orbán, Hungary had often clashed with Brussels and with its V4 partners, particularly Poland, over rule-of-law issues and Hungary's closer ties to Russia. Magyar's ascent to power marked a sharp shift in Hungarian politics away from Orbán's nationalist, EU-skeptic stance. Notably, the summit appeared to ease recent tensions between Magyar and Fico — Slovakia's prime minister, who leads the left-nationalist Smer-SD party and has adopted positions broadly sympathetic to Hungary's former government line on issues such as Ukraine and EU policy. The meeting suggests that despite ideological differences among the four leaders, practical regional cooperation within the V4 framework may be reviving after a period of internal friction.