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UPDATE 5.24.23: Poland has adopted tactics similar to those of Hungary in its battle against illegal migrants. Politico reports:
WARSAW — Poland is mulling setting up special camps where asylum seekers would be housed in containers and kept behind fences in the event of another migration crisis, according to the country’s interior minister.
“The thing is to be ready for such a situation in the form of places in which those waiting for deportation would be kept who may try to break the law,” Mariusz Błaszczak told Polish radio on Tuesday. “That’s all it entails. Besides, there are similar container camps in France and in Germany.”
It’s a very similar approach to one adopted by Hungary, which has come under fire from the EU for its harsh approach to asylum seekers.
The camps are part of an overhaul of the asylum system to restrict migration planned by the country’s Law and Justice party (PiS) government. It would allow border guards to detain asylum seekers for up to 28 days along the border while their applications are processed, “which will prevent efforts to illegally move to Western Europe.”
A second initiative sets the rules for temporary migrant camps, including regulations allowing them to be housed in converted shipping containers, “in the event of a mass inflow of foreigners onto the territory of the Republic of Poland.”
The idea is popular politically. A recent survey by the CBOS organization found that 74 percent of Poles don’t want migrants from Africa or the Middle East in their country — among supporters of Law and Justice the figure was almost 90 percent.
UPDATE 3.22.23: New Czech President Petr Pavel, a former NATO military committee chief, has said his country will cooperate more closely with Slovakia and Poland as part of the Visegrad group but not with Hungary. Euractiv reports:
Pavel, inaugurated as the Czech president on 9 March, visited Slovakia for his first official trip on Monday and is set to also visit Poland this week. He did not plan a trip to Hungary, the fourth country of the so-called Visegrad group.
“Nowadays, I see the Visegrad Four as more of a consultative forum without the ambition of detailed coordination of foreign or security policy, which is not what the group was intended for,” Pavel said after meeting his Slovak counterpart Zuzana Čaputová on Monday.
Pavel was critical towards the Visegrad group, particularly Hungary, even during the election campaign. His predecessor and the previous government considered the Visegrad Four to be key allies, especially in promoting national interests at the EU level.
But following the change in leadership, the Visegrad group has no more vocal supporters in Prague, though both the government and the president advocate for bilateral cooperation with Slovakia, Poland and the Baltic countries.
UPDATE 9.19.22: Relations between the members of the Visegrad four have been strained since the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, with Hungary remaining neutral or even slightly pro-Russia in the conflict, while Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia have chosen to strongly support Ukraine. Many analysts have wondered about the ability of the V4 nations to heal the rift between them. Poland’s Prime Minister opened the door recently to reconciliation. Robert Simonsen reports in The European Conservative:
Following six months of strained relations that came in the wake of the onset of the Russo-Ukraine War, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has voiced his desire to strengthen ties with Hungary and resume multilateral cooperation with the Central European countries of the Visegrád bloc.
The Polish prime minister’s statements, published earlier days ago in the weekly political news magazine Sieci, came in response to a question where he was asked if Poland’s friendship with Hungary had ended due to divergent responses to the Russo-Ukraine War, and whether there was any chance of unfreezing Visegrád Group activities, the Warsaw-based news outlet Do Rzeczy reports.
Speaking on Visegrád Group’s recent ideological split—with Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia on one side, fervently backing US, UK, and Brussels-led sanctions against Russia and arms shipments to Ukraine, and Hungary on the other, refusing to take part in either out of concern for its national interests—the Polish prime minister had this to say:
The attitude toward the war has indeed divided us strongly. But I think that in the course of time all the other issues in which we have shown solidarity, understanding, and support will bring us firmly back together. I would very much like that.
Morawiecki then underscored that the Visegrád Group—a cultural, economic, and political alliance that has allowed Central Europe to more forcefully assert its unique perspective and interests in the face of left-liberal dominance within the EU—has “enormously strengthened” its individual countries.
“That is why our group persists despite different governments, sometimes very different, in different countries,” he noted.
UPDATE 7.14.22: Slovakia has become the new rotating president of the Visegrad Four (V4) group, and given the differing stances on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine held by Hungary and the other members of the V4, the focus will be limited to internal cooperation. Lucia Yar reports for Euractiv that Slovakia will eschew foreign policy during its presidency of the group, to instead focus “on deepening regional cooperation in the development of transport, nuclear energy, low-carbon technologies, green and digital transformation, sustainability, youth mobility, and interpersonal relations.”
UPDATE 5.19.22: In Hungary today, the American Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is being held in Europe for the first time. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the leader of Hungary, one of the Visegrad Four nations, welcomed the American conservatives calling his country “the bastion of conservative Christian values in Europe.”
Orban discussed immigration and its effects in his speech saying “I see the great European population exchange as a suicidal attempt to replace the lack of European, Christian children with adults from other civilizations – migrants.”
Originally posted on September 17, 2019.
On the Defend Europa blog, an American ex-pat writing under the name Kasper, explains the Visegrad nations’ decision to “take action against the sustained North African and Middle Eastern migrant invasion of Europe.” As a result, notes Kasper, “Islamic terrorism is basically non-existent in these countries.” He writes (abridged):
Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia (The Visegrád Countries or V4) have long been part of a single civilisation sharing cultural and intellectual values and common roots in religious traditions, which they have continuously strived to strengthen and preserve. These countries are some of the only nations on the continent who’ve remained steadfast in their desire to hold on to their native Christian, European identities.
The current leader of the Visegrád group and current Prime minister of Hungary, Victor Orbán, has been a key figure opposing EU tyranny.
He dared to vocalise the thoughts of all thinking European’s when courageously said, “The question of the coming decade; will Europe belong to Europeans.”
Visegrád countries are bound together by the shared belief that Europe should first and foremost be for Europeans.
The Visegrád group nations encompass 65 million Europeans. Increasingly, the V4 is becoming the economic success stories of the European community. The economies of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary are all growing rapidly, and indeed are growing faster than any region in the world with the exception of the economies in the Asia Pacific.
Their growth is predominantly export-led and they are now becoming the go-to location for foreign direct investment in Europe.
Unlike its western European counterparts, security is one of the main priorities of the V4 governments. Islamic terrorism is basically non-existent in these countries. They’re the only European countries that have decided to take action against the sustained North African and Middle Eastern migrant invasion of Europe.
The Visegrád countries are providing an all-important alternative vision for Europe’s future that runs counter to that which has been thrusted upon the European people by unelected, pro-EU, globalist bureaucrats who sit in their ivory towers in Brussels.
Read more here.
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