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Welcome to The Spectator Podcast. I'm Isabel Harvman. On this week's episode, we'll be looking at the emerging ambitions of the Vichagrad 4 in a new Europe.

We'll also be examining whether there's a way out of the government's current drift, and celebrating 70 years of Radio's finest quiz.

This week's cover story looks at growing friction between two European factions. On one side, the Macron and Merkel-led Federalists are looking for greater integration,

whilst on the other, the Vichagrad 4 are starting to reassert their anti-immigration stance.

Will the Alliance hold, asks John O'Sullivan in the magazine, and can it arrest the momentum of the EU project?

First off, I was joined by Sean Hanley from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL to understand what's going on.

So what has been the purpose of the so-called Vichagrad group historically?

Well, the Vichagrad group was formed shortly after the fall of communism to coordinate the foreign policies and European policies of several Central European countries, originally three, Poland,

Hungary and Czechoslovakia, later four, when Czechoslovakia were split. And I guess it was formed in the context of their aspirations to join the European Union, which wasn't a done deal in the early

90s. It was something that was uncertain that might happen, that they

wanted to happen, but which couldn't be relied on. And how much has its motivation changed in

recent years? I think its importance has varied. The countries all have their own distinct

foreign policies which change with changes, changes of government. It's coming to its own, I think, more when their

interests line up as recently with the European refugee crisis and the proposal for quotas of

refugees when they came together in opposing that. And in his piece this week, John O'Sullivan

writes that the umbrella explanation of Central Europe is that populists undermining the EU and putting democracy there into crisis, the so-called Vichagrad 4 are descending into authoritarianism.

Do you think this is the Western view of Eastern Europe, and how much truth is there in that?

It is a predominant view. I do think we need to take a more variegated view of central and eastern Europe.

And I think we need to look at the countries in turn.

I think in Hungary and Poland, where there are very powerful conservative national parties,

I disagree somewhat with the peace,

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