Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Poland and the other Visegrád Group countries will seek to block any European Union climate measures that push energy prices higher, arguing that current costs already threaten industrial competitiveness across the bloc.
The Visegrád Group, known as the V4, is a political grouping of four Central European EU and NATO members: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is not an EU institution and has no parliament, court or army of its own. Leaders meet to coordinate positions in Brussels. Slovakia currently holds the rotating V4 presidency.
Tusk spoke Thursday in Bratislava after meeting the prime ministers of Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, as well as Ireland’s Micheál Martin. Ireland holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of the year. Slovakia hosted the session in a V4-plus format, which brings an outside leader into selected talks.
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“Whether we are talking about ETS1, ETS2, or other proposals, anything that brings a risk of more expensive energy for us will be blocked by us,” Tusk said. “Poland and the V4 will not allow any changes or any proposals from European institutions or other countries that could worsen the energy situation in our countries. Energy prices in this region, including in Poland, must fall.”
He said high power prices were a threat not only to Central Europe but to the EU’s ability to compete with China and the United States. “We can forget about any dreams of competing with China or the United States if our energy prices remain as they are right now,” he said.
The Emissions Trading System, or ETS, is the EU’s main carbon market. Launched in 2005, it requires power plants and heavy industry to buy allowances for greenhouse-gas emissions. ETS2, an extension covering fuels used in buildings and road transport, is scheduled to start on Jan. 1, 2028. Poland and several other governments have already won a delay in that second scheme and have pressed Brussels to soften the original system.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said the four countries were united on emissions trading and would work both inside and outside formal EU council meetings. “We will be very active, and we will also engage in discussions outside the meetings of the European Council … to discuss what steps to take to bring down these energy prices,” he said. Fico said talks had covered ETS reform, decoupling gas prices from electricity prices, and alternatives to current power trading arrangements.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš said industrial countries in the region were paying far more for allowances than Brussels once projected. “All of us in our industrial region pay a lot of money for emissions allowances. And what did the commission tell us in 2020? That the price of this allowance in 2030 will be €26.50. Right now, it’s €80,” he said.
Eurostat data cited in Polish reporting show that Polish households paid €27.09 per 100 kilowatt-hours, including taxes and levies, in the second half of 2025 — the 11th-highest figure in the EU and slightly below the EU average of €28.96. Adjusted for purchasing power, however, Polish households faced the second-highest electricity prices in the bloc, at 37.15 PPS per 100 kWh, behind Romania and just ahead of the Czech Republic.
Energy costs have become a central fight in Polish politics. The opposition Law and Justice party has called for a unilateral exit from ETS. President Karol Nawrocki, aligned with the right-wing opposition, has twice tried to call referendums on rejecting EU climate rules, including ETS. Parliament, where Tusk’s coalition holds a majority, rejected both attempts.
The government says leaving the system would expose Poland to large, recurring fines. It has instead sought reform. In July the European Commission floated changes after pressure from Warsaw and others. Climate Minister Paulina Hennig-Kloska said she had assembled a group of 10 countries seeking a more realistic emissions path and funding rules that take account of national energy mixes and GDP per capita. Other member states oppose weakening ETS, arguing that it would punish countries that cut emissions earlier.
Poland still generates about half of its electricity from coal and remains one of the EU’s larger emitters relative to the size of its economy. Renewables supplied just over 29% of generation in 2025. The country’s first offshore wind farm began producing power this year. A national plan approved in June aims, by 2040, for most power to come from wind, nuclear and solar, with coal down to 0–5%.
The V4 was founded in 1991 in the Hungarian town of Visegrád to help the region leave the Soviet orbit and join Western institutions. All four states later entered NATO and the EU. The club has often been divided on Russia and Ukraine, but energy costs and industrial competitiveness still produce a common line.
The four together account for about 14% of the EU population, short of the share usually needed to form a blocking minority under qualified-majority voting. Tusk’s pledge is therefore a political signal as much as a procedural threat: Warsaw intends to keep energy prices at the centre of EU climate and budget talks.
