Fighting for a different Central Europe that recognises its European identity and values and is determined to take the lead in rebuilding the European project is among the goals of the New Central Europe initiative, which signed its declaration on cooperation in Bratislava on Monday.
The signatories are the political movements NEOS from Austria, Nowoczesna from Poland, Momentum from Hungary, and Progressive Slovakia. "Central Europe needs a new vision for its future in Europe. Following decades of crisis the EU is now heading for a change and a renaissance, but Central Europe remains imprisoned between provinciality and stagnation," reads a statement by the New Central Europe initiative. "I come from a country where its head Viktor Orban is clearly anti-European and anti-EU, while people in Hungary are clearly pro-European oriented, just like the Momentum movement," said the movement's vice-chairman Tamas Soproni, adding that the opposition Hungarian political movement wants to find allies in the region and fight for the European vision. Representative of the Polish movement Nowoczesna Ryszard Petru views the Visegrad Four group (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) as dead and inoperative. "The idea was excellent, but the countries are led by politicians who do not represent society," said Petru. He went on to say that the movements that have signed the joint declaration want to share the values of tolerance, prosperity as well as other European values.
Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament who delivered a speech in Bratislava on Monday welcomed the initiative as "a new platform for dialogue and joint political action among liberal pro-European movements and citizens needed to move Europe forward". Asked to comment on Slovak Government's statements on Slovakia wanting to be in the core of the EU, Verhofstadt replied.
Verhofstadt
Máte problém s prehrávaním? Nahláste nám chybu v prehrávači.
Concluded the leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament.
