📩 Making sense of V4 in 2024

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DEAR READER,

October 26 was a critical day for Georgia's pursuit of a European path, though the road ahead seems rocky. Despite antagonizing its citizens in 2024 by passing controversial laws, the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party secured a shocking 53% of the vote, defying exit polls (besides, of course, the government-affiliated one) that placed their support closer to 40%. Opposition leaders, alongside the president, labeled the elections rigged and called for a demonstration on Monday evening, with several European and US leaders expressing strong support for the Georgian people. While the OSCE’s ODIHR mission has yet to publish its full report, it indicated that despite voters having a chance to choose from a wide range of political parties, irregularities undermined a genuinely fair process.

Reports of voter intimidation and pressure surfaced in the buildup to the elections. Added to this were claims of vote-buying, suspiciously inflated voter numbers, and carousel voting in rural areas. These irregularities led to GD sweeping up to 80% of votes in certain regions, especially with minority populations. Meanwhile, votes from Georgian expats told a different story: despite obstacles, Georgians abroad, some traveling thousands of kilometres to cast their ballots, overwhelmingly backed opposition parties. I myself traveled to Warsaw to vote, joining over 1,000 others.

So, here are my two (or in this case three) cents about the elections:

1. The Georgian Dream has immense administrative power to intimidate, buy, and manipulate votes, especially in the regions. This factor appears to have been overlooked by many, underestimating the role of pre-election meddling. Reports of voter intimidation and alleged vote-buying tactics circulated for weeks, but the scale of these actions, particularly in rural areas, clearly cost the opposition this election.

2. Opposition parties failed to communicate effectively with rural voters and failed to counter the Georgian Dream's propaganda. The opposition parties only managed to win in Tbilisi, Rustavi, and abroad. Georgian Dream's “peace versus war” narrative appears highly effective in a nation still scarred by the 2008 war with Russia. The opposition struggled to counter this message with effective arguments.

3. International support is essential for Georgia and its pro-European voters in the coming days. Should the US and EU recognize the results, the opposition may have no choice but to enter parliament, where GD enjoys a comfortable majority of 89 seats, leaving them with little leverage. If the elections are not recognized by the West, the opposition will need to present credible proof of large-scale election manipulation, or the protests will likely fizzle out amidst speculation, echoing the 2020 parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, the new parliament will likely pass even more conservative laws.

Belarusization is a realistic threat — what can be done to prevent this remains unclear. Sentiment among young voters is increasingly pessimistic, signaling a likely growth in already high emigration rates. The next few days will be crucial for the opposition to come up with a clear plan.

In our expert opinion this week, we’re talking about regional blocs — and one important one in Central Europe: the Visegrad Group. We asked Jakub Ferencik, a journalist at Czech Radio for Radio Prague International, to make sense of the bloc in 2024 — is it dead or alive?

Enjoy reading this week’s “brief”!

— Giorgi Beroshvili, Editorial Assistant

For many years now, when analysts discuss regional cooperation between the Visegrád Group (V4), they stressed that the alliance operated more as a “V2+V2” split, with Slovakia and Czechia on the one side and Hungary and Poland on the other. The division was never entirely accurate, of course. In 2024, however, dividing these countries into two distinct camps is even less straightforward.

To simplify, prior to 2022, it was possible to paint broad overlaps between Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland, the former ruling party that tailored to conservative voters, and Viktor Orban’s Fidesz in Hungary. The two often criticized what they portrayed as EU infringement over member state sovereignty. But after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, some of those differences were temporarily put to the side. Instead of the V2+V2 split, the V4 morphed into a V3 + Hungary because of differing responses to Russia. The widening gap in the group is made especially evident by Poland’s enormous assistance to Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees. The isolation Hungary faced in Ukraine did not last long, however.

In 2023, when Robert Fico returned to power, the country went through a series of reforms, dubbed by some “Orbanization.” This included the restructuring of the state-funded broadcaster Radio and Television of Slovakia (RTVS), the dissolution of the Office of the Special Prosecutor to halt corruption investigations, and threats to the media, journalists, and NGOs. Despite this common — and warranted — understanding, it is possible to see that Hungarian and Slovak cooperation has more to do with the circumstantial isolation the two countries face. Unlike Orban, Fico is not contesting Slovakia’s membership in the EU since he sees the enormous value in membership. Therefore, Fico has not taken the same hard-line approach as Orban against Ukraine. Indeed, despite threatening "not to send another bullet" to Ukraine in 2022, the Slovak government has continued dialogue and even provided military support to their Ukrainian counterparts.

The matter of support for Ukraine is made even more complicated by the upcoming Czech elections in 2025, where Andrej Babiš’s ANO party is expected to do well after the recent positive results of the Czech regional and state elections. So, the future of the pro-democratic block in the V4 and illiberal elements seen in Slovakia and Hungary can widen further.

Despite this, we have seen time and time again that the bloc can choose cooperation even when divided on fundamental issues. For example, in an interview with Czech Radio’s external service, Radio Prague International, Czech Minister for European Affairs Mikuláš Bek said that the V4 is "definitely not dead" and that it’s instead better to think it is "taking a pause" due to Hungary's stance on the war. He argued that the group can survive these oppositions as long as it continues to find common projects to work on. In the words of Fiala when Czechia hosted the V4 in February 2024: “There are a number of topics where we differ in opinion, but that shouldn’t prevent us from having a dialogue.”

Pro-democratic forces in the region can only hope for the same stance in the years to come.

— Jakub Ferenčik, Journalist at Radio Prague International

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