What V4 is and how it works

A declaration, and the town it was signed in

The founding text is a declaration and not a treaty. It was adopted at Visegrád on 15 February 1991 by the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, the Republic of Poland and the Republic of Hungary, and its closing line records that it was done in three identical originals, in the Polish, Czech and Hungarian languages, equally valid. The signatures were those of Václav Havel, Lech Wałęsa and József Antall. The draft the meeting worked from was written out by hand by Havel, and the sheet is reproduced on the group's own site. The same three delegations, of presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and parliamentarians, had first met at Bratislava on 9 April 1990.

The town was chosen for what had happened in it. Visegrád stands on the Danube upstream of Budapest, and through November 1335 it was the seat of Charles Robert of Hungary, who held a congress there with John of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, with Casimir of Poland, and with a plenipotentiary of the Teutonic Order. The business before them was an arbitration in the Polish dispute with the Order over Pomerania, and agreements on trade and customs came out of the same meeting. The name of the modern group is a deliberate reference to that congress.

What the text asked for

The declaration sets out objectives the three signatories describe as convergent: full restitution of state independence, democracy and freedom; the elimination of the social, economic and spiritual aspects of the totalitarian system; the construction of a parliamentary democracy and a modern state of law; the creation of a free market economy; and full involvement in the European political and economic system and in its systems of security and legislation.

The practical steps listed under those objectives are narrower and easier to check. The signatories undertook to harmonise their contacts with European institutions and consult on security, to create free contacts between citizens, institutions, churches and social organisations, to develop trade on free market principles, to build infrastructure links mainly in the north to south direction, to cooperate on ecology, and to work on the rights of national minorities living in their territories. The text also states that the cooperation will not interfere with the signatories' relations with other countries and is not directed against the interests of any other party.

Eleven days after accession, on 12 May 2004, the prime ministers met at Kroměříž and stated that the key objectives set in 1991 had been achieved. The Kroměříž declaration and its annex list what the cooperation would cover next, from cross-border projects and disaster management to consultations inside the European Union and NATO, and the mechanisms in that annex are still the ones the presidencies say they follow.

Three signatures, and 4 members

One of the signatory states no longer exists. Czechoslovakia dissolved at the end of 1992, and Czechia and Slovakia both entered the United Nations on 19 January 1993. No accession instrument was drawn up for either of them and the declaration was not reopened: the group counted the successor states and carried on, which is why a text with three signatures stands behind a group of 4.

The dates do not line up

Accession to the European Union is the one date every member shares. Entry to the Schengen Area is the second, on 21 December 2007. Past those two the records separate. Czechia, Hungary and Poland entered NATO on 12 March 1999, and Slovakia on 29 March 2004. Poland has been a member of the United Nations since 24 October 1945 and Hungary since 14 December 1955, while the other two date from 1993. Slovakia is the only member inside the euro area, which it entered on 1 January 2009.

The one thing it built

The International Visegrad Fund is the group's only institutionalised form. The agreement establishing it was signed by the prime ministers on 9 June 2000 at Štiřín near Prague, after the idea was agreed at a summit in Bratislava in May 1999, and the fund took its seat in Bratislava. It runs on equal representation and shared responsibility: the four governments pay equal shares of a budget reported at 11 million euro a year in June 2025, and the executive directorship rotates between them. By its twenty-fifth anniversary in June 2025 it had supported nearly 6,750 projects and distributed more than 140 million euro, in grants, academic scholarships and artist residencies, inside the group and in the Western Balkans and the Eastern Partnership countries.

How it runs

The group's operations rest on periodical meetings of representatives at every level, from prime ministers down to working experts, with an official prime ministerial summit once a year, usually in June. Between summits one member holds the presidency, and the handover falls on 1 July: Slovakia took its seventh term on 1 July 2026. A parliamentary strand runs alongside it. Presidents of the four parliaments have met since 13 January 2003, and on 18 April 2007 in Prague they signed an agreement to hold those meetings once a year, in the state holding the presidency, with committee meetings called as needed.

Where the edges are argued

The group's own description of itself is defensive on two points: the format was not created as an alternative to European integration, and it does not compete with the other structures of central Europe. Both sentences answer a reading of the group as a bloc inside the European Union, and the catalogue records the reading and the answer without settling either.

The group is also not the same thing as the region its members sit in. This catalogue files Germany and Slovenia under the same subregion as the members without their being part of the group, and the group has taken no member and lost none since 1993. There is no published procedure for joining. Meetings held with partners outside the group are labelled V4 plus, which is a format for guests rather than a route to membership.