"Young people born in today's Eurozone have no future ahead of them, unlike our youth born in the East," Hungary's brash, xenophobic Prime Minister Viktor Orban said at the 26th Economic Forum earlier this month.
All eyes were on the mini-summit of Southern European nations that took place in Athens last week. But what if the real problem currently facing Europe is the behavior of the Visegrad Group - comprised of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
These countries want to become a buffer between the European Union and Russia, and at the same time emerge as a tough opponent of the European Commission's immigration policies.
We had an opportunity to observe this team in action at the 26th Economic Forum, held in the historic spa town of Krynica, Poland, in the verdant Carpathian mountains. This is the eastern version of the better-known Davos forum. It has grown to attract prominent corporate sponsors, huge turn-outs of business executives and politicians (though almost none from the EU), and strong security measures.
The four Visegrad members, who were joined on this occasion by Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, chose their leader a while back: the Hungarian premier himself.
They presented clear ideas to an attentive audience packed into an enormous, mountain-side conference room, among them: unbridled liberalism guided by cumbersome government and fueled by European and American funds; no immigration; a foreign policy independent of the EU; and a return to traditional values.
No Syrian wants to live in a country as inhospitable toward immigrants as Hungary is today, yet Orban acts as if they're all vying to be there.
At least, these are their intentions. Otherwise, we're out of here, Orban threatens, despite the fact that his country -- like Poland, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic -- is continuing to grow at a rate even higher than in most Western countries, thanks to the maximum utilization of shared EU funds and a domestic devaluation policy that is very appealing to foreign investors.
Everyone knows that no Syrian wants to live in a country as inhospitable toward immigrants as Hungary is today, yet Orban acts as if they're all vying to be there.
The summit was overburdened with phrases such as "common European roots," and "common traditions," even though the goal of these four Eastern leaders is to disrupt the cultural hegemony of Italy, Germany, and France, who continue to move forward with a discourse of integration.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French Prime Minister François Hollande use the word "Europe" as a uniting force. Orban, alongside his colleagues Beata Szydlo of Poland, Bohuslav Sobotka of the Czech Republic, and Robert Fico of Slovakia, use it to divide the prisoners of the Maastricht Treaty from the world's new champions of self-determination.
Orban is as dangerous as he is charismatic. It is difficult to disentangle the strategic thread that runs through his elaborate discourse.
Are Rome, Paris, Madrid, and Lisbon working themselves ragged to respect the 3 percent deficit-to-GDP ratio required of EU members, and seeking wiggle room in their public expenditures amid steady deflation?
The Eastern European countries are raiding European funds, and creating a large "Carpathian" bloc. This alliance is capable of sending European immigration policies haywire, and has done so since the spring, erecting walls and calling referendums on the presence of foreigners.
Moreover, their economic strength relies in part on the money that belongs to all Europeans. The EU had allocated €325 billion to be divided among the 28 member states between 2014 and 2020, and the percentage of this money designated for Central and Eastern Europe has grown (from €177.57 to €180.93 billion, an increase of 2.6 percent) while the percentage going to Western Europe has shrunk (from €169 to €140 billion, a decrease of 16 percent).
To be more precise, the biggest winners here are Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia in fifth place.
Losing European funds, meanwhile, are the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia. But overall, transfers of common funds to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are becoming ever more significant, comprising between 2 and 3 percent of regional spending, and often exceeding direct foreign investments.
As you listen to the Hungarian leader demanding the erection of "anti-immigration walls in Southern Europe," amid general complacency -- walls that are built by generous regional aid -- you rightly wonder if we're just arming Europe's enemy.
This prospect should be a source of concern for Brussels summit leaders, who were absorbed in Tspiras's Euro-Med summit as well as the latest of many meetings of their own Economic and Financial Affairs Council, and paid no attention to the meeting in Krynica.
This post first appeared on HuffPost Italy. It has been translated into English and edited for clarity.