Analysis by Sejla Almadi
The proposal on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021–2027 has been defined along “Europe’s priorities” by the European Commission (2018) and will be the first long-term budget for the European Union of 27. In the political debate of the budget, the Visegrád Group or V4 countries represent a strong alliance on several dimensions. The research objective was to decide whether the V4’s priorities could shape Europe’s Priorities in the MFF 2021–2027 and to see how the priorities in the proposal were reflected by the members’ communication or opinion in the EU institutions. To this end, it implemented a multi-qualitative design: data elaboration (from a former research) and data generation (semistructured interview), to which thematic analyses were applied. The most important conclusions were that the individuals’ opinion at the EU institutions could differ from the organisational manifestation, which had the potential for the V4 countries to enforce their interests in the debate; the Visegrád Group had a strong “enforcement capability” to shape Europe’s priorities (i.e. in Migration and Border Management); compromise on behalf of the EU member states would be needed the most at discussing the migration. The paper had a complementary function to the formerly published research with the same title, and provided implications mainly for the Visegrád Group, the EU institutions and the EU member states.