Digest of news from Slovakia, Czechia, Poland, and Hungary

July 13 – July 19, 2026

Joint Case of this week: Slovakia and Czechia deepen defense-industrial cooperation

During a visit by Slovak Defense Minister Robert Kaliňák to Czechia, the two countries signed a series of memoranda on defense cooperation. Czech Defense Minister Jaromír Zůna said one concrete outcome was Slovakia's accession to a framework agreement on arms procurement, under which the two sides will explore jointly purchasing AM120 mortars needed for Czech mechanized brigades; Czech specialists are due to visit Slovakia in late July for practical trials. Zůna said the countries had also agreed on further projects beyond the framework agreement itself, and confirmed Czechia's interest in continuing its participation in the European ISSI air-defense program, which it joined in 2022. 

On the nine-country Anti-Ballistic Coalition, he described the initiative as a partial step focused on expanding one specific system developed in Ukraine, and cautioned against letting competing projects emerge, arguing the priority should be cooperating on a single shared system rather than spreading efforts thin.

Kaliňák, for his part, thanked Czechia for helping police Slovak airspace since 2022 and noted that 171 Czech troops currently serve in the multinational forward-presence brigade stationed in Slovakia. Together, the agreements point to a bilateral defense relationship that is expanding beyond token gestures into joint procurement and shared long-term planning, even as both governments remain cautious about broader EU-wide funding commitments to Ukraine.

Slovakia

1) Bratislava plans to import around 1.2 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas a year after 2027 

2) President Pellegrini says Slovakia won't join a new €70 billion Ukraine aid package 

Analysis:‍

Slovak Economy Minister Denisa Saková said Slovakia plans to import roughly 1.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Azerbaijan starting after 2027, once the country has fully stopped importing Russian gas, noting that Baku is offering five- and ten-year supply deals to several EU states in exchange for long-term commitments that support its production expansion. The plan took shape during a July 14–15 visit to Azerbaijan by a Slovak delegation led by President Peter Pellegrini, which produced a series of economic, energy, and security agreements; Pellegrini publicly thanked President Ilham Aliyev for Baku's quick offer of gas supplies during the energy crisis triggered by the halt of Russian transit through Ukraine. Azerbaijan's SOCAR has already been supplying Slovakia under a short-term pilot deal since December 2024, and the country now has gas agreements with 16 states, 13 of them in Europe, having added Austria and Germany to its client list this year; the exact pipeline route for scaling up deliveries to Slovakia remains under discussion.

Separately, President Pellegrini said Slovakia will not join a newly proposed €70 billion package of military aid for Ukraine, arguing that several other NATO members, including Hungary and Czechia, hold a similar position and that participation in such initiatives should not be mandatory for every alliance member. He said defense spending increases should not be driven simply by allied expectations or pressure from Washington, and that investment should first serve Slovakia's own security and territorial integrity. Pellegrini acknowledged that rising defense demand has already benefited the Slovak economy, which exported more than €3.5 billion worth of arms and military equipment last year as one of Europe's leading producers of large-caliber ammunition, but said he does not want Slovakia's economy to become overly dependent on the defense sector long-term, and hopes the war's eventual end will allow a return to broader investment in education and civilian technology.

Taken together, Slovakia's week shows a government drawing a sharp line between the partnerships it is happy to expand, such as new energy ties with Azerbaijan and deeper defense-industrial cooperation with Czechia, and the collective obligations it wants to keep optional, such as EU-wide funding for Ukraine. Pellegrini's insistence that defense spending decisions stay national rather than allied-driven fits a broader pattern of Bratislava prioritizing its own room for maneuver over binding commitments to shared initiatives.

Czech Republic

1) FM Macinka backs gradual EU integration for candidates but opposes further centralization 

Analysis:

Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka said Czechia supports gradually integrating candidate countries into individual EU policies wherever they are ready, arguing that early participation in the single market or specific EU programs can bring real benefits to citizens and businesses and ease the path to full membership, so long as gradual integration remains a stepping stone toward full membership rather than a substitute for it. He said future accession treaties could include narrowly justified, proportionate, and strictly time-limited safeguard or transitional provisions, but that these should never create permanent gaps between member states or separate tiers of membership, and that enlargement should stay firmly merit-based with the same rules applied to every candidate. 

Macinka added that the EU itself needs to prepare for enlargement just as candidates prepare for membership, but said enlargement must never become a vehicle for further centralizing the Union: Czechia opposes expanding qualified-majority voting into areas that currently require unanimity, considers the national veto an important guarantee that member states of every size remain equal partners, and does not want enlargement used as a pretext to shift more power from elected national governments to EU institutions.

The stance places Czechia among the more cautious voices on EU institutional reform even as it continues to support Ukraine's and other candidates' eventual membership, drawing a clear distinction between backing enlargement and backing deeper integration. That distinction is likely to keep shaping how Prague approaches both the accession negotiations themselves and the parallel debates in Brussels over treaty change.

Hungary

1) PM Magyar confirms an investigation into former FM Szijjártó's ties with Russia 

2) Hungary blocks the opening of accession clusters for both Ukraine and Moldova 

3) Parliament speaker Forsthoffer set to become acting president after Sulyok's removal 

Analysis:

Prime Minister Péter Magyar said on July 16 that an investigation is underway into former Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó's ties with Russia, links Magyar has previously described as state treason, though he declined to share details for now, saying the case involves extensive classified and foreign-policy material and that he does not want to influence its course before information can responsibly be made public.

At the July 17 meeting of the EU Council's enlargement working party (COELA), Hungary refused to support opening negotiating clusters 2 and 3 for Ukraine, agreeing only to open cluster 3 for Moldova alone. That attempt to decouple the two countries' accession tracks failed to win backing from other EU states, several of which objected to separating Ukraine and Moldova, so no decision was taken and both countries' clusters remain blocked. The issue will return at COELA's next meeting on July 22, the group's last session before the summer break, with the next expert-level meeting not scheduled until September 1.

Parliament speaker Ágnes Forsthoffer is set to take over presidential duties once Hungary's newly adopted constitutional amendment, which ends President Tamás Sulyok's term early, takes effect at midnight on July 20. Sulyok's term was due to run further, but he signed the amendment himself despite calling it unconstitutional. In a Facebook post, Forsthoffer said she would carry out the role responsibly and impartially in the country's interest until parliament elects a new president within the 30 days required by law, and that she would be unable to exercise her own mandate as an MP while acting as head of state; she proposed deputy speaker Anikó Nagy take over her parliamentary duties in the interim.

Together, these developments show Hungary's new government simultaneously dismantling the institutional legacy of the Orbán era at home, through the Szijjártó investigation and Sulyok's removal, while taking a notably tougher line than Bratislava or Prague on Ukraine's EU accession procedure. The contrast suggests that Budapest's domestic reform drive has not yet translated into a softer approach to enlargement itself.

Poland

1)FM Sikorski warns Russia may stage a false-flag attack using Ukrainian drones 

2) A CBOS poll finds Poles now oppose accepting Ukrainian refugees for the first time 

Analysis:

During a visit to the United States, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said Poland expects Russia to prepare a false-flag operation that could involve Ukrainian drones, recalling that Vladimir Putin said roughly a month earlier that Russia would respond if attacked by a NATO member. Sikorski said this suggests Moscow may be preparing to use Ukrainian drones in an attack on a NATO state, or on Russia itself, in order to justify retaliation, and that Putin could resort to such a move because he is "desperate and losing." He compared the risk to the 1939 Gliwice incident, when German intelligence agents disguised as Polish soldiers staged an attack on a radio station to help justify the invasion of Poland, and said his message to Putin was simple: Warsaw knows what he is planning and is telling him not to do it.

Separately, a new CBOS poll found that 52% of Poles now believe the country should not accept refugees from Ukraine, against 42% who hold the opposite view, the first time opponents have outnumbered supporters since the organization began tracking the question after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea. Support for accepting refugees stood at 94% immediately after the 2022 full-scale invasion and has been declining steadily since mid-2023, dropping six percentage points since December alone. The same poll found 54% of respondents consider the assistance given to Ukrainian refugees excessive, against 40% who call it adequate, with opposition to specific benefits varying sharply: 87% supported recent limits on full medical coverage for Ukrainians who do not pay into Polish health insurance, but only 29% supported ending free accommodation in collective housing centers for mothers with children over one year old, a change 58% opposed.

Sikorski's warning and the CBOS numbers point to two different pressures now shaping Warsaw's Ukraine policy: continued vigilance toward a Kremlin he describes as desperate, and a domestic public that is growing more selective, rather than uniformly hostile, about the costs of hosting Ukrainian refugees. The gap between strong support for tightening health-insurance access and weak support for cutting housing for mothers with young children suggests the government will need to calibrate future policy changes carefully rather than treat public opinion on refugees as having simply turned against Ukraine across the board.