BRUSSELS —Leaders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland will meet in Jerusalem in February for the next Visegrad Group summit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bid to strengthen their alliance with Israel.
This will be the first time a Visegrad Group summit is held outside of Europe.
The four leaders – Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki, Slovakia’s Peter Pellegrini, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and the Czech Republic’s Andrej Babis – will meet on February 18 and 19 in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu already attended the Visegrad Group summit in Budapest in 2017 during which he criticized the EU’s policy toward Israel.
The Israeli premier has been fostering closer ties with the Visegrad Group countries in order to advance pro-Israel issues at the EU level:
“The Visegrad Group is one of the sub-alliances that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is developing in the EU to neutralize what he views as an anti-Israel bias from Brusse,s”. wrote The Jerurusalem Post.
Both the Czech Republic and Hungary blocked any EU resolution to condemn the controversial move decided by U.S. President Donald Trump.
What is the Visegrad Group ?
The Visegrad Group (also known as the “Visegrad Four” or simply “V4”) reflects the efforts of the countries of the Central European region to work together in a number of fields of common interest within the all-European integration. Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia have always been part of a single civilization sharing cultural and intellectual values and common roots in diverse religious traditions, which they wish to preserve and further strengthen.