The Visegrad Group Ilona Pokorna Within the European Union, there are various more or less organized groups of states which exercise influ­ence over the political and economic decisions of the Union’s institutions. One of these is the Visegrad Group, 1 an inter-governmental alliance of several Central European countries which collectively define their own priorities for action with respect to a range of European policies. Origins The modern Visegrad Group has its origins in a sum­mit of the heads of state and heads of government of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland on 15 February 1991. The participants were: Václav Havel, the President of Czechoslovakia; Lech Wałęsa, President of Poland; and József Antall, Prime Minister of Hungary. The meeting took place in the small Hungarian town of Visegrad, the site of the Congress of Visegrad in 1335, at which the kings of Hungary, Bohemia and Poland had forged an al­liance against the Habsburgs. The three Member States became four, following the division of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1992. The group’s initial objectives(to implement demo­cratic systems based on respect for human rights, and to become members of NATO and the European Union) 1 http://www.visegradgroup.eu were achieved, and the four countries all joined the EU in spring 2004. The V4 in the institutions of the European Union The need to adapt to European rules while seeking to preserve their national identity and character, combined with the demand that they receive the same treatment as the“old” EU states, promoted cohesion within the group and fostered national sentiment. Influenced by historic experiences, since joining the EU the Visegrad Group’s members have resisted European centralization and have been reluctant to pool national sovereignty. As a recent example, we can mention immigration policy, where the V4 has opposed Merkel’s“refugees welcome” policy, and has flatly refused to meet the quotas for the resettlement of immigrants approved by the Council in 2015. Hungary and Poland have not accepted a single asylum seeker, while the Czech Republic and Slovakia have admitted 12 and 16, respectively. Another example of this attitude was the decision in 2019 to block the “head of list” procedure to appoint the President of the Commission. The portfolios of the four Visegrad Group mem­bers of the Von der Leyen Commission are: Agriculture, Poland(Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski); Values and Transparency, Czech Republic(Vice President Ve ˇ ra Jourová); Neighbourhood and Enlargement, Hungary 25