Britain’s Brexit wishes could be stymied by the Visegrad Four

ACCORDING to reports in a number of media outlets, the Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico has indicated that a group of four eastern European States, known as the Visegrad Four, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia would block any Brexit arrangement that limited people’s rights to work in the UK or anything that would effectively make those workers what he described as ‘second class citizens’.

Despite the fact that Slovakia currently holds the presidency of the EU until the end of 2016, other members of the Visegrad group have quickly distanced themselves from the statement suggesting that Mr Fico was speaking in his own right only as Poland is currently president of the group and even the Slovakian Embassy in London tried to clarify the situation by suggesting that his comments referred only to those currently living and working in the UK.

It is quite clear that the matter of Brexit continues to not only exercise the minds of all of the leaders of the European Union and the British government and people, but it also continues to be a minefield of differing opinion with no common agreement or indeed direction at this stage.