The Defence Policy Directors of the Visegrad states (V4) met in Budapest on 10-11 February 2014 for the second time under the Hungarian V4 presidency.

The objective of the meeting was to prepare the V4 Defence Ministerial to be organized on 13-14 March in Visegrad, discussing the documents serving the strengthening of V4 defence policy and defence planning cooperation, the annual V4 exercises as well as topical issues of the V4 EU Battlegroup (BG) to be on stand-by in the first half of 2016.

The head of the Hungarian Delegation, Mr. Péter Siklósi, Assistant State Secretary for Defence Policy and Planning of the Ministry of Defence hosted Mr. Jan Havranek Czech and Mr. Marcin Kazmierski Polish Defence Policy Directors and Mr. Dalibor Pavolka, Head of Defence Policy Department of the Slovak MoD.

Based on the decision of V4 Heads of Government the participants discussed the Long Term Vision of V4 defence cooperation and laid down the framework of a V4 defence planning cooperation. During the meeting the Directors agreed on the main messages of the two documents which could be finalized on the meeting of Defence Ministers in March.

They also touched upon the Memorandum of Understanding on the establishment of the V4 EU BG, the tasks related to the setup of the BG as well as the details of the annual V4 military exercises decided by the Heads of Government. The two-day event was concluded by a discussion about the recent issues related to defence policy and operations.

(Ministry of Defence)