Thirty years of shared history, a season of fractures, and now an attempt to start anew. The Budapest summit at the end of June brought together the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary around the same table, marking the first meeting of the Visegrad Group (V4) after more than two years of diplomatic freeze.
Donald Tusk, Andrej Babis, Robert Fico, and Peter Magyar, the four heads of government, declared at the end of consultations their intention to revive the informal alliance that, since its founding in 1991, has accompanied NATO enlargement, the withdrawal of the Red Army, and the pro-European orientation of the entire region.
Complicating and enriching the picture now comes an academic proposal that goes beyond simple reconciliation: a Vienna think tank envisions an expanded six-country format, capable of making the heart of Europe a more structured voice within the Union.
ONE GROUP, ONE HISTORY
Founded in the Hungarian city that gives it its name, the V4 embodied in its early years the pro-European and Atlantic vocation of post-Soviet Central Europe. It coordinated the withdrawal of Soviet troops, paved the way for NATO accession, and faced the first “energy rupture” by building a unified response to the cut of Russian gas supplies in 2009, strengthening the region’s energy autonomy.
However, the first significant international achievement dates back to 2014, when the group blocked the European approach to managing migration flows supported by Chancellor Angela Merkel, forcing Berlin to quietly revise its positions.
ORBÁN AND THE LOST DECADE
But that was the last united act. The following decade saw the group’s agenda progressively dominated by the pro-Russian orientation of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, with energy dependencies on hostile suppliers and democratic erosion that compromised the V4’s credibility within European institutions.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 finally made the strategic fractures between Budapest and the other capitals clear, marking the collapse of the ideological cohesion that had long held the bloc together. Summits stopped, relations cooled, and the V4 remained in a sort of diplomatic hibernation for years.
THE MAGYAR WINDOW
The election of Peter Magyar as Hungary’s leader has reopened a window. The new prime minister has made a sharp turn from his predecessor: in Budapest, he emphasized that the V4 will have “a strong voice” and that the four countries will once again jointly represent the interests of Central Europe.
On the energy front, the group can count on concrete assets: Poland has significantly strengthened its infrastructure, with the Swinoujscie liquefied natural gas terminal boasting an annual regasification capacity of about 8.3 billion cubic meters and a utilization rate close to one hundred percent, among the highest on the continent. Warsaw aims to transform this system into a regional gas distribution hub, with potential benefits for neighboring countries in terms of availability and prices.
However, shadows remain. Relations between Slovakia and Hungary are still burdened by historical disputes related to the Beneš decrees and issues concerning national minorities. Observers emphasize that only a pragmatic approach can allow the group to overcome these legacies. Consistency with NATO principles and building full energy security remain essential conditions for any credible revival project.
The coming months, marked by the Slovak presidency starting July 1st, will provide the first concrete elements to assess whether Budapest marks the beginning of a new chapter or remains a mere diplomatic parenthesis.
A SIXTH AND A SEVENTH NAME
It is in this scenario of renewed confidence that the proposal of the Institut für den Donauraum und Mitteleuropa (Idm) of Vienna, a think tank focused on Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, fits in. In a recent policy paper titled “New Bloc at the Center? The Case for a Schönbrunn Six,” researchers Sebastian Schäffer and Péter Techet imagine an expanded format that, starting from the V4 core, includes Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia, leaving Poland out to focus on six countries united by economic ties, institutional affinities, and overlapping political preferences: Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Croatia. The title refers to Schönbrunn, the imperial Viennese palace, almost evoking continuity with the Habsburg tradition that shaped this part of the continent.
The proposal takes its cue from Magyar’s own words, who already in April 2026 declared: “I would like to strengthen the relationship between Hungary and Austria for historical, cultural, and economic reasons.” Idm translates this openness into a concrete project: a founding summit in Vienna, three priority dossiers on which to build coordinated positions – enlargement to the Western Balkans, deepening the single market, migration management – and the use of the already existing institutional infrastructure of the Slavkov format, the regional and political cooperation agreement between Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, updated with the entry of Croatia, Hungary, and Slovenia.
A working group dedicated to the energy transition, focusing on grid interconnections, hydrogen, and nuclear safety standards, would be tasked with managing the most delicate divergences. The declared goal of the Viennese scholars is not to build an alternative to the EU, but to “equip the geographic heart of the continent with a more effective collective voice in Brussels”: a cohesive bloc, not a wall. The only limitation? The idea of doing without the most dynamic and economically driving country of the Visegrad group: Poland.
