Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) met new Hungarian Premier Peter Magyar for the first time on Thursday ahead of the European Council meeting in Brussels.
According to Fico, it was a brief meeting, which he described as a good start to their mutual cooperation.
The two leaders will next hold talks at the upcoming summit of the Visegrad Four (V4: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) prime ministers, which is scheduled to take place in Budapest next Tuesday (23 June). "I very much welcome the fact that both prime ministers are interested in continuing this format, and we realise how important it is, because if we coordinate our positions before European Council meetings, we have great strength," stated the Slovak prime minister.
Following the bilateral meeting, Fico and Magyar met the other V4 leaders - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Czech Premier Andrej Babis - for the first coordination meeting of the V4 prime ministers in several years.
In a statement of social media Fico stated that: "We agreed that the meeting in Budapest will also be as factual as possible. And it's good that we've already discussed our shared priorities today. It's primarily a matter of competitiveness and high energy prices. We share the same view on this, so we'll act together," said the prime minister, expressing hope that if the V4 continues in this vein, the prime ministers "have done a great job" in Brussels on Thursday.
Following his meeting with the premiers of neighbouring countries, Fico had scheduled talks with the leaders of EU member states united in the so-called 'Friends of Cohesion' group, which is working toward the same goal: to ensure that sufficient funds are allocated in the EU's next long-term budget for the years 2028-2034 for the cohesion policy as well as common agricultural policy.
Source: TASR
