Visegrad Insight: The State of Central Europe after the December EU Summit

There were two sources of disagreement concerning the veto of the budget. First one was the real threat that there would be no agreement until the end of the year and therefore we would be going to some minimal budgetary framework for the next year. And the second source of disagreement was that the rule of law is perceived as really one of the basic EU values that the Member States have all signed up for. This line was particularly stressed by the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs, who repeatedly said that the proposed mechanism should not be controversial for anybody. However, the disagreement did not really turn into any harsh rhetoric towards Poland and Hungary.