V4 heads of state meet in Esztergom amid heavy police presence and the exclusion of the independent press

The heads of state of the Visegrad Four (V4) are meeting in Esztergom on Wednesday: Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok is holding talks with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, Slovak President Peter Pellegrini, and Czech President Petr Pavel. The meeting began at 10 a.m. in the Esztergom Basilica. The heads of state will hold their discussions at the St. Adalbert Center, where Tamás Sulyok arrived shortly after 10:15 a.m. with a small entourage. The press was completely shut out of the event; according to our reporter, police even escorted them from the parking lot of the St. Adalbert Center. The said that these were their orders.

According to Telex's reporter, there is a very strong police presence at the scene. Approaching the basilica was impossible, with police officers stationed up to hundreds of meters from the entrance. The flags of the V4 countries were displayed outside the St. Adalbert Center, and at 9:45 a.m., a military honor guard was stationed in front of the building.

We would have liked to register for the diplomatic event and the subsequent press conference. However, the office of President Tamás Sulyok informed us that this would not be possible. "We regret to inform you that we can only accommodate a limited number of domestic and foreign media representatives, so we are unable to grant your request," they wrote. They added that the press statements of the presidents of the V4 countries would be published by the public media. Other independent Hungarian media outlets received the same response.

The Polish presidential office, on the other hand, published the detailed program of the V4 meeting. According to this, the heads of state arrived in Esztergom at 11 a.m. They will then make a short press statement at 1:15 p.m. and have brunch before returning home.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki was originally scheduled to meet with Viktor Orbán in Budapest after the V4 meeting in Esztergom. However, Nawrocki canceled the meeting on account of the Hungarian Prime Minister's recent visit to Moscow. The meeting would have been important for Orbán because the Hungarian government viewed the victory of Nawrocki, a member of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, in the presidential election as a sign of the strengthening of the Hungarian prime minister's policy of alliances and of patriotic parties at the European level.

At his annual hearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly this week, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said that he considered it regrettable that the Polish President had canceled his meeting with the Hungarian Prime Minister. "Our cooperation with three of the V4 countries is entering a new dimension," he said, referring to Hungarian-Slovak-Czech relations, adding: "Everyone is free to decide which bilateral program they would like to participate in, and we respect that."