Online meeting of the Speakers of the Parliaments of the Visegrad Group States, 12. January 2021.


The meeting Speakers of the Visegrad Group (V4) was held online on 12 January 2021, in the framework of the Polish Presidency of the Visegrad Group upon the invitation of Elżbieta Witek, Marshal of the Polish Sejm and Tomasz Grodzki, Marshal of the Polish Senate. The event was attended by László Kövér, Speaker of the National Assembly, Radek Vondráček, President of the House of Representatives, Miloš Vystrčil, President of the Senate of the Czech Republic and Boris Kollár, the President of the National Council of the Slovak Republic.
The meeting consisted of two parts and the following topics were discussed: the first part concerned the development of parliamentary cooperation in Visegrad Group, the resolution marking the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Visegrad Group, and regional cooperation with a view to combating the economic and social crisis caused by COVID-19; while during the second part of the meeting the Speakers discussed the European Green Deal, the proposal for a new Pact on Migration and Asylum as well as other current issues on the EU agenda, and V4 cooperation in the light of current foreign policy challenges (including the situation in Belarus, EU integration of the Western Balkans and the Central Europe policy of the USA after the presidential election).
The Speakers were in agreement about the need to strengthen the cooperation of the Visegrad Group, the need for joint action as well as a number of other issues like migration or foreign policy. The creation of a V4 Parliamentary Assembly or a similar consultative body was raised again in conjunction with the need to strengthen the cooperation of the V4 parliaments. The Polish Parliament proposed that the 30th anniversary of the Visegrad cooperation be commemorated by the four parliaments in a resolution or a similar form.
Speaker László Kövér informed the meeting that the Hungarian National Assembly had begun the planning for the events of the parliamentary co-operation under the Hungarian V4 Presidency, which will last for a year from July 2021, and in this context informed his partners that he intended to invite them again for the 10th Conference of Parliamentary Speakers of Southeast European countries to be held in the autumn of 2021.
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